The city’s budget leaves much to be desired
The annual city budget charade kicks into high gear this month, with the final public workshop before the city manager’s proposed 2012-13 budget. Why a charade? Because the city is broke, and has been since before the recession started — only no one Downtown has ever really admitted that. Hence the idea that we’ll cut a few things here and there, and pretty soon — presto, like magic — things will be back to normal.
Which, of course, has not happened. We’re actually worse off in a variety of areas now than we were a decade ago — not that anyone Downtown would ever acknowledge that. But pore through the 2002-03 and 2011-12 budgets, available on the city’s website, and you can see for yourself.
A couple of caveats, first: The city changed the way it did the budget several years ago, so just because something was in the 2002-03 police budget, for example, doesn’t mean it was in the 2011-12 police budget, and vice versa. I made every effort to compare apples to apples, but the current budgeting process doesn’t make that easy (the cynical among us might think that was the point of the change). So there’s a chance I missed a budget item. Second, I used usinflationcalculator.com to measure the 2002-3 numbers in 2012 dollars, which was current for the U.S. Consumer Price Index through April.
What I found was quite depressing:
• Overall spending increased from $1.7 billion a decade ago to $2.0 billion. Adjusted for inflation, the budget is 8.5 percent less in the current fiscal year than it was 10 years ago. We’re not even treading water — and with a tax rate that went from 51.11 cents per $100 assessed valuation in 2002-3 to 79.70 cents this year. That increase exceeded the inflation rate, which would have pushed the tax rate to only 65 cents per $100 assessed valuation.
• We spent $22.8 million on the library system a decade ago, and just $20.3 million this fiscal year. That’s a decline of 11 percent, and a whopping 30 percent in real dollars. Even I, who have been ranting about the way the budget has gutted the library system, didn’t know it was that bad.
• If it seems like there are more potholes today than a decade ago, that’s because there probably are. We spent $69.3 million on street services in 2002-03, and $72.4 million this year. In real dollars, that’s an 18 percent decline. We do, however, have a signature bridge.
• The numbers for code compliance seem like manna from heaven compared to the others. We spent $27.6 million in 2011-12, which was actually a 7.8 percent increase in real dollars over the sum in 2002-3. I was so excited to see actual growth that I didn’t check population growth, the number of new buildings, and the like over the past decade, all of which would increase the code compliance workload and negate the gain. Why ruin a relatively good thing?
• There was similar good news in the police budget (assuming I found all of the things that were in the 2011-12 figures that were located elsewhere in 2002-3) — a 4.3 percent increase in real dollars, assuming that the workload was about the same as a decade earlier.
Finally, the city manager’s office spent $1.9 million in 2002-3, and just $1.5 million this fiscal year. That’s a decline in real dollars of more than one-third, an actual contribution to the budget crisis.
