12/28/11
The Insider has been musing about the amount of your cash the City has in its "bank" reserve accounts. The amount on hand is considerable (around $14 million) and rumored to be coveted by our state legislators in their flailing attempts to get the state budget deficit under control.
So, you are invited to consider the following which is extracted from the 11/28 council work session materials.
All amounts are in $ thousands unless otherwise noted.
Reserve Account Start 2012 End 2021 Needed (6 months' expenses)
Water Utility 3732 4999 350 City water users paying too much
Sanitary Sewer Utility 3527 -275 500 Paying too much, but subsidizing Storm Water
Storm Water Utility 339 118 300 Fees too low, but subsidized by Sanitary Sewer
Parks Improvement 137 -673 ? Source is $40,000 yearly from tax levy
Community Investment 1667 -118 ? No new $ coming in. 100% spending on trails
So, what to take away from this?
Staff is suggesting the overage and the shortfall in Sanitary and Storm Sewer, respectively, be balanced against each other over the next 10 years. Seems a good approach if one assumes Storm Water projects are really necessary.
Watch for Mayor Lizee and her team to find a way to spend the excess Water Utility money. The discussion of this is planned for a February council work session. Will there be any serious discussion of finding a way to send some of this excess back to water users who have paid too much? Likely not.
The Insider has written about trails. Above you can see that the Trail Plan, which has quadrupled in cost since Council received it from the Trail Committee, sucks the Infrastructure fund dry, plus some. Spending $1.8 million for trails!
Finally, the Parks Fund is orphaned. The Parks Commission has had lots of discussion about improvements over the next 10 years, but Mayor Lizee and her team just don't have a Parks strategy. The Insider believes parks are one of Shorewood's key features and deserve thoughtful funding for improvements. The last information on usage from the City was that some 3000 individuals were registered sports users of the parks each year plus countless casual users walking, ice skating, etc. Does it make sense to ignore these users in favor of some undefined use associated with new trails?
It's your money. What do you think?
Happy Reading!
The Insider
Just as long as they don't subsidize commercial development, or give more money to the Firemen and Policemen-or raise city salaries.
ReplyDeleteTrails?
A south trail extension connecting with Tonka Terrace might be useful, but it doesn't have to follow highway 19. Why not cut through city owned property near the Public Safety building?
I would like to see more trails -- especially on Smithtown Road.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the blog.
The latest trail committee was a pie-in-the-sky exercise. We need safe passageways where they are desperately needed such as along Smithtown Road. I cringe whenever I see someone trying to make it safely down that road.
ReplyDeleteInstead of wasting our time on thinking about where we would LIKE trails how about trying to figure out how to just get the important one or two BUILT.
Say Insider, as long as we are talking about money, how are we paying for the expensive director of the South Shore Center? Is there a balance sheet available for that endeavor?
ReplyDelete