Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Budget update: the noncontroversial stuff (so far)
My loyal readers, both of you, will recall we've had some pretty raucous times in the last several autumns. This is the season when the city assembles its budget for the following year, where priorities are locked into place by cold hard cash. We've had a lot of dust-ups as too many priorities chased too little cash, and as reforms were either needed or caused controversy or both.
In that atmosphere I've posted budget surveys that were by the far the most popular things I ever did on the Internet. People love to weigh in on city spending.
This year, reflecting spending plans for 2010, is the dullest budget year I've seen of my six years on the council. By dull, I mean there's not a lot of public fuss. Most of what we are seeing this season is being perceived as tweaking.
I wish there was a bit more excitement. The crime rate is up in Lakewood, though that subject hasn't come up much in four budget hearings so far. Maybe in Lakewood it's assumed public protection is a high priority, and you all trust the council to factor that in. Certainly my priority was making sure police continued to have a lion's share of the budget. Lakewood's violent crime rate rose from 8.2 incidents per 1,000 citizens in 2007 to 9.2 in 2008. Lakewood thus moved from having the sixth highest violent crime rate in the state in 2007 to fourth in 2008. The bright spot was that property crime diminished 1 percent.
Prudent financial management means our budget is in good shape, so unlike a lot of public entities here in the recession we're not looking at laying off large numbers of the staff. As budget seasons go, this one is pretty placid.
So all that said, there are still some significant things going on. I'm going to touch on several quickly, and let you tell me if you want more.
- Community policing. I helped lead the charge over the last couple years to restore community-based policing. This year represents an evolution in our community policing system, proposed by City Manager Andrew Neiditz, which seems to make a lot of sense. We have six community service officers, one for each of six patrol districts. That will change to three community service officers and three code enforcement officers. The code officers will still serve as liaisons to city services for individual districts, but also have specialized training to deal with drug houses, car lots, and other issues we struggle with and which lead to a lot of the crime.
- Community Development Block Grants. I've been critical during the last couple budgets of how our city uses federal grants different than many other communities. I happen to know this because as a newspaper reporter in several other cities, I saw other cities spend their block grant money differently. Under a reorganization, community development block grants would be managed by the economic development department. This is great news, because the best use of these grants is to spend some money to "make money:" create opportunities for more jobs, better housing, etc... In practical terms, it's likely a lot of this money will be used in at least the next couple years for the Tillicum area which will be undergoing a lot of redevelopment.
- Merging. We don't make government bigger, we make it smaller. The city clerk's office will be merged into the city attorney's office.
- Human services, which had been managed from the city clerk's office, will be merged into the parks department, which will be called the Parks, Recreation and Community Services department. I personally oppose this because I think the parks department already has too much to do, but I suspect it will go through. No council members have questioned the idea, and there's certainly plenty to be said in favor of nesting human services within parks.
- In-house road care. We will remove four positions as part of the changes above, but then add two positions as we switch out some contracting with Pierce County for two new street workers in the city's Public Works department. This should save us $400,000 and lead to better service. Everyone thinks that contracting out can save money/ Lots of times it can. But Pierce County government is not beholden to the Lakewood council, and the council will likely choose to save money and hire staff managed by the city. This change is about accountability and good value for money.
- Another subject I've worried about in the past is court security. The new budget would hire a security person who can also supervise work crews. It's not a cost increase because we've been paying police overtime for the security.
The overall budget is $86.7 million, 6.17 percent lower than this year, 2009. That decrease is a bit deceiving because the budget was higher this year than it would normally have been because of the new police station.
So those are the highlights of changes so far. There's still some subjects the council is actively discussing. And there are other changes, such as road construction planned. You'll want to know the details. But this post has gone on long enough. My next budget post will be about more such proposals and talk about ways to weigh in. There's a lot more info about the budget at the city site.
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In that atmosphere I've posted budget surveys that were by the far the most popular things I ever did on the Internet. People love to weigh in on city spending.
This year, reflecting spending plans for 2010, is the dullest budget year I've seen of my six years on the council. By dull, I mean there's not a lot of public fuss. Most of what we are seeing this season is being perceived as tweaking.
I wish there was a bit more excitement. The crime rate is up in Lakewood, though that subject hasn't come up much in four budget hearings so far. Maybe in Lakewood it's assumed public protection is a high priority, and you all trust the council to factor that in. Certainly my priority was making sure police continued to have a lion's share of the budget. Lakewood's violent crime rate rose from 8.2 incidents per 1,000 citizens in 2007 to 9.2 in 2008. Lakewood thus moved from having the sixth highest violent crime rate in the state in 2007 to fourth in 2008. The bright spot was that property crime diminished 1 percent.
Prudent financial management means our budget is in good shape, so unlike a lot of public entities here in the recession we're not looking at laying off large numbers of the staff. As budget seasons go, this one is pretty placid.
So all that said, there are still some significant things going on. I'm going to touch on several quickly, and let you tell me if you want more.
- Community policing. I helped lead the charge over the last couple years to restore community-based policing. This year represents an evolution in our community policing system, proposed by City Manager Andrew Neiditz, which seems to make a lot of sense. We have six community service officers, one for each of six patrol districts. That will change to three community service officers and three code enforcement officers. The code officers will still serve as liaisons to city services for individual districts, but also have specialized training to deal with drug houses, car lots, and other issues we struggle with and which lead to a lot of the crime.
- Community Development Block Grants. I've been critical during the last couple budgets of how our city uses federal grants different than many other communities. I happen to know this because as a newspaper reporter in several other cities, I saw other cities spend their block grant money differently. Under a reorganization, community development block grants would be managed by the economic development department. This is great news, because the best use of these grants is to spend some money to "make money:" create opportunities for more jobs, better housing, etc... In practical terms, it's likely a lot of this money will be used in at least the next couple years for the Tillicum area which will be undergoing a lot of redevelopment.
- Merging. We don't make government bigger, we make it smaller. The city clerk's office will be merged into the city attorney's office.
- Human services, which had been managed from the city clerk's office, will be merged into the parks department, which will be called the Parks, Recreation and Community Services department. I personally oppose this because I think the parks department already has too much to do, but I suspect it will go through. No council members have questioned the idea, and there's certainly plenty to be said in favor of nesting human services within parks.
- In-house road care. We will remove four positions as part of the changes above, but then add two positions as we switch out some contracting with Pierce County for two new street workers in the city's Public Works department. This should save us $400,000 and lead to better service. Everyone thinks that contracting out can save money/ Lots of times it can. But Pierce County government is not beholden to the Lakewood council, and the council will likely choose to save money and hire staff managed by the city. This change is about accountability and good value for money.
- Another subject I've worried about in the past is court security. The new budget would hire a security person who can also supervise work crews. It's not a cost increase because we've been paying police overtime for the security.
The overall budget is $86.7 million, 6.17 percent lower than this year, 2009. That decrease is a bit deceiving because the budget was higher this year than it would normally have been because of the new police station.
So those are the highlights of changes so far. There's still some subjects the council is actively discussing. And there are other changes, such as road construction planned. You'll want to know the details. But this post has gone on long enough. My next budget post will be about more such proposals and talk about ways to weigh in. There's a lot more info about the budget at the city site.
