Grin of the Week or Saying One Thing In Public and Doing The Opposite In Private
I laughed out loud reading the most recent edition of Highland Highlights, which arrived in my mailbox this week.
What made me laugh? Mayor Scott Coleman’s letter to residents. After revealing his hand-selected picks for the Charter Review Commission (CRC) and discussing their mission, the mayor writes:
"The meetings are open to the public and I encourage residents to attend to listen to the discussion and possibly add any ideas they may have."
Yeah, right.
Well, maybe he just forgot that you have to unlock the doors, if you really want the public to attend---right Mr. Mayor?
Campaigning versus Fiscal Responsibility
Mayor Scott Coleman presented his 2011 budget to Council’s Legislative & Finance Committee (L&F) a couple of weeks ago. A slightly tweaked budget will be presented for adoption at this Tuesday’s council meeting.
The mayor clearly drafted the budget with a view to his reelection campaign. Need proof? Some projects that normally would be general fund items (like street striping) have been moved to the 401 capital improvements fund---thereby avoiding what would otherwise be deficit spending in the general fund.
One thing I don’t expect the mayor to mention-- his projected 2011 general fund spending is up 5.3% over actual spending last year….
I doubt that Mayor Coleman will want to crow about that in his campaign literature.
The budget is quite important. By law, the mayor’s ability to spend money (and the finance director’s ability to write checks) is limited to the amounts appropriated in the budget. That’s really not as much of a failsafe as it sounds, however, because as Mayor Coleman has repeatedly pointed out, budget appropriations are subject to change. A budget is truly meaningful only if the mayor who created it is committed to sticking with it.
Bottom line, budgets are policy statements; they reflect the priorities of the person creating them. With that in mind, it is interesting to take note of a couple of items that Mayor Scott Coleman chose to include---and what he left out--- of the budget that he presented to L&F this year.
What’s Out.
- Despite all of the public interest in the city’s new green space, the mayor included $0 for renovating and/or developing that space into a community gateway and gathering place.
- Despite all the recent discussions about flood plains and flooding in the city, the mayor included $0 for drainage issues (usually $25,000 is included in the budget for drainage issues).
- Despite the beating our city roads took this winter, and despite the fact that several surrounding communities plan to spend $1+ million for road maintenance and repairs this year, Mayor Coleman included only $ 252,000 for “miscellaneous concrete repairs and crack sealing”—$0 has been appropriated for resurfacing city streets this year.
Mayor Coleman’s budget includes $220,000 (taken from several different taxpayer-financed funds) to renovate/replace the Old Pool House (OPH) in the park.
The OPH is currently the site of a working service department workshop. It also provides power for Community Day and winter storage for recreation-related items. Replacing those usages is a necessary component of any OPH renovation/replacement project. The budget lists moving the electrical connection, but it doesn’t mention moving/replacing the workshop. Mayor Coleman said during last week’s Committee of the Whole meeting that the workshop replacement would come out of the $220,000 appropriation, but it could just as easily end up as an additional expense. That would make sense. After all, when the entire project was bid out last year, the acceptable bids came back in the $300,000 range.
What does Mayor Coleman’s proposed $220,000 expenditure say about his priorities? Think about this.
The park has only one entrance; as Councilwoman Cathy Murphy has pointed out, every single person coming to the park in a car uses that entrance. For years, Council and residents have acknowledged that the park entrance is too small and dangerous---especially if you have to turn left into the park from Wilson Mills
Things don’t get much better once you actually make it into the park. The entrance road and the auxiliary exit road to Woodside are in pretty rough shape.
So you’ve got a dangerous entrance and bad roads. Now add the specter of two Mayor Coleman-approved gas wells in the park. With gas wells comes the need to have a quick and effective evacuation route---just in case something goes wrong (like a gas line explosion, a tank battery rupture or the release of toxic sulfide or radiation into the air). Can you imagine hundreds of kids and their parents trying to flee the park at the same time? What a nightmare.
You’d think that a responsible leader with an extra $220,000 burning a hole in his pocket would make addressing safety issues in the park his top priority.
But not Mayor Scott Coleman. He and his appointed cronies on the Park & Recreation Commission apparently think that spending a quarter million dollars of taxpayer dough renovating/replacing the OPH---to use as rain shelter for an 8 week summer day camp program--is much more important.
Now that’s good fiscal leadership for you.
As I see it, if I really, really wanted to build a new backyard deck for summer barbeques, but my front porch was dilapidated and dangerous, there would be only one responsible decision (fiscal or otherwise) that I could make: I’d have to stop dreaming about ribs and burgers, bite the bullet and replace the porch.
Mayor Coleman is facing the same kind of choice with regard to the park. As his budget shows, however, he’s going in a different direction. Forget safety. He’s planning to trot out the charcoal instead.
