Mr. Mayor, Thank you for the explanation of what is cooking in City Hall. I look forward to following this process closely. I encourage you to continue looking at options to cut and restructure. I would also encourage you to explore revenue opportunities. For example, I would love to see a parking tax administered in Minneapolis. Work it out with the Chamber of Commerce, but let's look at parking as a revenue source. Increasing meter rates and taxing parking ramps could potentially generate small amounts of revenue from people using our streets, police protection and fine atmosphere.
I pay $3.75 per day when I park for work, and it wouldn't kill me to pay more if it meant I was receiving additional value for my dollar. Jeremy Wieland Northeast -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Rybak, R.T. Sent: Tuesday, June 22, 2004 10:34 AM To: Mpls Forum Subject: [Mpls] City budget I want to put this morning's news regarding the police five year plan into context. I do not want to cut positions in the police department. I want to add positions, especially by hiring new recurits who relect the makeup of the city. But when I, or anyone else, says simply they want spend more in one area, make sure you ask us where we will cut....because a city that has built up debt for far too long needs to keep coming to terms with some very uncomfortable financial reality. That's what I will be doing between now and early August when I present my budget. I'm wide open to ideas...we need all the brainpower we can get right now. We have dramatically fewer resources because of a number of factors, including long term debt, massive state aid cuts, rapidly rising health care, pension funds that are gobbling up huge chunks of the budget and a recession that has decreased the value of commercial property. While all this has happened, the state passed a property tax redistribution that shifted the burden from commercial property onto residential. This, plus the commercial value drop above, has meant big increases in property tax on homes, making it much harder to raise property taxes on already overburdened homeowners. The phase out of limited market value makes it even more difficult to raise property taxes. The bad news is that because of these factors above we don't have as much discretionary money. The good news is that all the work we have done on long term planning is giving us a clearer picture of the challenge, and starting to give us some tools to use to get out of the hole. Unlike three years ago, we now have a five year financial framework passed by the mayor and council designed to work us out of the hole dug by years of debt and, based on those numbers we now have every department in the city required to develop a five year budget and five year business plan. The police budget you read about in the paper this morning, or the Health Department presention yesterday some of you may have seen on cable, are parts of that process. The department heads were to build their long term strategies around the numbers in the five year financial direction. The results aren't pretty, as you can see in the police plan and the health department plan.....but they are the first step we need to understand the implications. You will continue to see these very stark picutres as each business plan comes forward but it is much better for the public to learn about the implications in a very public way, see what it means over a long period of time...instead of having it sprung on people in each budget. I was also very pleased the most significant part of the police budget had to do with deployment issues: how do we use officers more effectively because, no matter how much money we have, we are safer if the officer is spending more time on the street. As that business plan is presented...it comes before Executive Committee and Public Safety tomorrow--- it will be very helpful to have input from citizens about these ideas, and other input about things not in the plan that could be added. I also want to make it clear we aren't just accepting the situations. I'm working almost exclusvively on budgets issues, as are the people in our budget office, and many other parts of the city...and that work will come out in August when I present my budget. Here are a couple things we are doing to address the long term structural issues that are hurting our financial situation. First, on health care, when we saw forecasts of these costs going up 20% percent for years to come, we worked with our unions to restructure the system to lead to significant savings. Second on pensions, we are about to appoint a high level advisory group with deep background in this area to develop some key recommendations for restructuring. This is going to require cooperation with our pensioneers, and the legislature. You will be hearing more about this in coming times. Third, on the long term debt that I referenced above, one of the key drivers is the Internal Service Fund, which the five year financial direction attempts to pay off. These, and a number of other initiatives were received very well by the bond ratings agencies we met with a couple months back...and I'm pleased to say that they continued to keep the city's ratings, a significant achievement in these times. With that context, I'm very interested in hearing thoughts about how we should address all this. No idea to too out there...we need all the creative thinking we can get. R.T. Rybak REMINDERS: 1. Think a member has violated the rules? Email the list manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED] before continuing it on the list. 2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. For state and national discussions see: http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html For external forums, see: http://e-democracy.org/mninteract ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls REMINDERS: 1. Think a member has violated the rules? Email the list manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED] before continuing it on the list. 2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. For state and national discussions see: http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html For external forums, see: http://e-democracy.org/mninteract ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
