Tuesday, May 26, 2015
Article from Washington Post regarding homelessness. Please check it out.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-life/wp/2015/05/06/meet-the-outsider-who-accidentally-solved-chronic-homelessness/?tid=trending_strip_1
Friday, May 15, 2015
May 12th Council Meeting - Budget Talks Begin
Thornhill began the talks with stating that we weren't the only city with an upside down budget this year. Thornhill blames ours mostly on retiree medical benefits and PERS that apparently no one really knew was coming! For REAL??!! So, no one keeps track of who is retiring, about to retire and does their diligence in calculating that out ahead of time? The lawsuit with HFFA had to do with retiree medical benefits. They knew it was coming. When the city gets sued for something that is within its scope to evaluate, you can't get away with playing stupid.
Although, they did just decide to keep accurate accounting of our city books. They stated it was for TRANSPARENCY. City/County Governments love using this word right now. (Our State Senator uses this word constantly. Except when you call his office and request information and they tell you someone will call you back later that day who has better knowledge and still has not called a week and a half later; transparency doesn't seem to be a true priority.) No, its called they weren't keeping things properly accounted for and for who knows how long. I think enough people just started asking enough questions. So why are they deciding to do this now? Accounting principals are not new. The City of Hemet is not new. What has been the problem?
Although, they did just decide to keep accurate accounting of our city books. They stated it was for TRANSPARENCY. City/County Governments love using this word right now. (Our State Senator uses this word constantly. Except when you call his office and request information and they tell you someone will call you back later that day who has better knowledge and still has not called a week and a half later; transparency doesn't seem to be a true priority.) No, its called they weren't keeping things properly accounted for and for who knows how long. I think enough people just started asking enough questions. So why are they deciding to do this now? Accounting principals are not new. The City of Hemet is not new. What has been the problem?
There are 4 items that were covered in last night's discussion that factor into our 15/16 upside down budget. Accounting Changes (aka: doing their job properly), General Fund (Expenditures and Reserve), Other Funds and Timing. Here's what is projected to be up: Sales tax by 11.3%, Property tax by 4.1%, Development Fees by 3.7%. This new fiscal year budget is upside down by $4,725,937. If this number is not adjusted come time to adopt the budget, this leaves our reserve at 24.31%. Our city policy is to maintain a 20% reserve. There was an entire discussion regarding this at a council meeting about a year ago. Keep in mind that this deficit is pre-CIP. I will go into that later. Some of the projects can receive some grant money to drive down the cost and prevent a further significant increase of the deficit.
The salaries and budgets are up $1.9 million this year. Here are the major factors and the "Timing" part that is referred to above: Work Comp ($200,000), Retiree medical ($454,200) and PERS ($471,600). The total cost for new positions in this budget is $765,000. These positions include an Assistant City Manager (According to Thornhill, you can't get away with just a City Manager), 4 more Community Service Officers for PD (discussed in the Strategic Plan), Media and Intelligence Analyst for PD (this is also discussed in the Strategic Plan), part-time Library Assistant (which we badly need) and a Housing Specialist.
Capital Improvements: The projected cost to the General Fund is $1,033,800. Some of these improvements include Phase 2 of the Community Camera System (PD is already looking for funding to offset the cost), ADA Transition (priority), turf replacement, ERP (city's finance system) needs about $300,000/year set aside because it is expensive. They decided it was a good idea to build a reserve now rather than presenting a large cost in a few years. I agree.
Public Safety: It is the most substantial portion of our city budget. Both PD and Fire are working to staff their departments. PD is 5 positions away from being fully staffed at what was authorized. Overtime overall and specifically end-of-shift overtime should decrease significantly by adding the additional sworn and community service officers. If the grant that fire just applied for is rewarded, our fire chief is looking to fill 7 vacancies (it was 9) and get some management positions. Filling the vacancies will help drive down the cost of OT. The mutual aid and strike team OT was not tracked separately from discretionary OT until now. Cal OES reimburses the city for that OT 100%. However, it takes 3-4 months for the reimbursement to hit our books. A little bit of a problem in keeping things clearly balanced and identifying the source when there is no distinction. The paramedic program is now split so that we can see the cost of the program and the impact it has on the department and the general fund. I guess they can get away with this one. After all, the city did just decide to ALLOW the paramedics that we already had on staff to actually act as paramedics.
Now to the city attorney, which now has it's own fund. The city attorney fund is up $129,900. They said that there was a reason for this increase but did not discuss it. And truly, that was about it on that topic.
Future dates for Budget Discussion: There will be an updated proposed budget discussion on 6/9 and they are looking for the budget to be adopted on 6/23.
Tuesday, May 5, 2015
Council Meeting April 28th- Documents and Auditing and Water....ohh my!!!
Hello Everyone!
Council authorized some document destruction. There's a spreadsheet of the items due to be destroyed in the full agenda (you can find it on the city website). Who oversees that? There's also a company that has been hired to audit. It is not clear as to what exactly they will be auditing. If you check out the amount other cities are paying for their auditing, you would be amazed. As an example, the City of Calabasas spends about $10k/year less than we will be spending. What exactly are we paying for? Are they doing more than the normal scope or are we paying them extra for something else?
The almost $250,000 being paid out to a city manager who was fired, and to be honest should not have been hired to begin with, had no real discussion. Milne was of course upset that he was fired the way he was but the fact that she is mad about tax payer dollars being wasted is ridiculous!
So here is their new strategy: they are going to push to contract out as much of the operations of the water department as possible, if not all of it. This will drive up water costs again. Water rates had not increased in years and apparently it was time. The rate increase was just voted on and passed. We contract out any part of our department and the rates will increase as we all know. What do you think the chances are of a utility tax passing to fund our public safety after our water costs have gone up not just once, but twice?
Honestly, we need to conserve water. Here is what needs to happen: we need to go after grants that will change out our city landscape to drought tolerant/native landscaping. If we are going to have golf courses in the desert, then they should have been watered with recycled water from day one. San Diego is doing this. Anything else is irresponsible. This is not the first time we have had a drought. The fact that water conservation was not taken more seriously is now going to not only burden our water department but everyone's pocket books as well.
Speaking of this valley's water being held hostage...
If you wanted an update on the body contact bill (Diamond Valley Lake) Stone is sponsoring, please continue reading. It is now a two year bill. He is working with MWD to revise it. He maintains that MWD promised economic development in the planning of the lake. MWD maintains the priority of that lake is to provide an emergency water supply to the state. The economic development (aka body contact that was promised) was not completed due to lack of funding. In the event it becomes a body contact lake, the filtration system needed to make that water usable as drinking water is very expensive; millions upon millions of dollars. Even then, the filtration system may not be deemed enough. If MWD did not have the money for economic development, where will MWD receive the funds for the proper filtration system? While this bill is re-worked, that has to be the priority and item 1 on the agenda. Otherwise, we have an emergency water source that is of no use to us. By the way, I called Stone's Murrieta office today inquiring the status of the bill. All I got was that the people were promised economic development by MWD. I feel that the priority has to as an emergency source. I was also told that someone from Stone's office would call me back today with more information. I didn't receive a call back. So what exactly is the motivation? I may not be as concerned if my children were not being raised in this valley and I didn't have a background as a geologist. However, both are true, so I have concerns. I will have updates on this as I receive them.
Council authorized some document destruction. There's a spreadsheet of the items due to be destroyed in the full agenda (you can find it on the city website). Who oversees that? There's also a company that has been hired to audit. It is not clear as to what exactly they will be auditing. If you check out the amount other cities are paying for their auditing, you would be amazed. As an example, the City of Calabasas spends about $10k/year less than we will be spending. What exactly are we paying for? Are they doing more than the normal scope or are we paying them extra for something else?
The almost $250,000 being paid out to a city manager who was fired, and to be honest should not have been hired to begin with, had no real discussion. Milne was of course upset that he was fired the way he was but the fact that she is mad about tax payer dollars being wasted is ridiculous!
So here is their new strategy: they are going to push to contract out as much of the operations of the water department as possible, if not all of it. This will drive up water costs again. Water rates had not increased in years and apparently it was time. The rate increase was just voted on and passed. We contract out any part of our department and the rates will increase as we all know. What do you think the chances are of a utility tax passing to fund our public safety after our water costs have gone up not just once, but twice?
Honestly, we need to conserve water. Here is what needs to happen: we need to go after grants that will change out our city landscape to drought tolerant/native landscaping. If we are going to have golf courses in the desert, then they should have been watered with recycled water from day one. San Diego is doing this. Anything else is irresponsible. This is not the first time we have had a drought. The fact that water conservation was not taken more seriously is now going to not only burden our water department but everyone's pocket books as well.
Speaking of this valley's water being held hostage...
If you wanted an update on the body contact bill (Diamond Valley Lake) Stone is sponsoring, please continue reading. It is now a two year bill. He is working with MWD to revise it. He maintains that MWD promised economic development in the planning of the lake. MWD maintains the priority of that lake is to provide an emergency water supply to the state. The economic development (aka body contact that was promised) was not completed due to lack of funding. In the event it becomes a body contact lake, the filtration system needed to make that water usable as drinking water is very expensive; millions upon millions of dollars. Even then, the filtration system may not be deemed enough. If MWD did not have the money for economic development, where will MWD receive the funds for the proper filtration system? While this bill is re-worked, that has to be the priority and item 1 on the agenda. Otherwise, we have an emergency water source that is of no use to us. By the way, I called Stone's Murrieta office today inquiring the status of the bill. All I got was that the people were promised economic development by MWD. I feel that the priority has to as an emergency source. I was also told that someone from Stone's office would call me back today with more information. I didn't receive a call back. So what exactly is the motivation? I may not be as concerned if my children were not being raised in this valley and I didn't have a background as a geologist. However, both are true, so I have concerns. I will have updates on this as I receive them.
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