Brent
05-11-2004, 11:30 AM
All,
I have drafted this "interim report" that consolidates our significant observations and findings thus far, along with some general background information.
Council's first budget work session is tomorrow (Wednesday 05/12), so I would like to send this report to them today. Please comment on the report!
Here it is:
Citizen Budget Review (“The People’s Money”)
Interim Report 05/10/2004
Introduction
This is an interim report of the Citizen Budget Review Committee. This group of volunteer citizens continues to meet to discuss the Town of Cary budget; however, we wish to summarize our work and discussions to date so that Cary Town Council can consider this input for their upcoming budget work sessions (capital budget 05/12/2004, operating budget 05/25/2004)
Mission Statement
This volunteer citizen group will examine the Town budget (2004/2005) in an objective manner and offer advisory input to Cary Town Staff and Town Council about fiscal issues, including revenue and spending priorities, individually and through group consensus.
Participants
Participants were not appointed or selected. Participants are those who volunteered to take part in this effort. Many citizens were initially invited by Council member Michael Joyce, and he encouraged those citizens to invite others. Many people heard about this initiative through e-mail; the Cary News also did a story on the committee and provided contact information for others who wished to take part. Anyone who expressed an interest in participating has been added to the group. Thus far we have had 26 citizen participants.
To date we have held 4 in-person meetings. Those who have participated in at least one meeting include the following citizens. For those who have participated in more than one meeting, the total number of meetings they have participated in is shown in parentheses. In addition to the in-person meetings, we have also had e-mail and on-line forum discussion of various budget issues.
Daryl Baker, Darryl Black, Kelly Commiskey (2), Spencer Combos, Ray Czarnecki, Matthew Danielson (4), Mike Dodson (4), Ken Elowitz, John Finn, Don Frantz (2), Karen Griffin (3), Cathy Heath (4), Mike Heath, Katherine Haney (2), Don Hyatt (3), Lynn Loots (2), Tom McCuiston, Brent Miller (4), Josh Mills, Cas Nowak (2), Betty Pickett, June Schmidt, Anita Porter, Bynum Walter, Matt Walter, Ron Woodard (3)
This is a diverse group of citizens – about 2/3 male, 1/3 female; living all over Cary (with one in the ETJ); having a wide variety of occupations; and political party affiliation of about ½ Republican, ¼ Democrat and ¼ Unaffiliated.
In addition to these citizens, Cary Town Council members have, at various times, attended some portions of certain meetings (for the record, a majority of Town Council members have not attended any single meeting). We appreciate attendance of Michael Joyce (who initiated this effort), Mayor Ernie McAlister, Mayor Pro Tem Jack Smith, Julie Robison and Jennifer Robinson. Adam Arnold of the Cary News also has attended one meeting. Robin Joyce facilitated logistics for getting the first meeting underway.
Discussion
We have had much valuable, varied and often lively discussion. It is not possible to go through every detail of every facet of the budget, so we have worked toward a process of identifying our budget and fiscal priorities so as to provide input for consideration by Town Staff and Town Council. This diverse group does not always unanimously agree on all issues, but we have found many issues where we have a very strong group consensus.
Committee Input To Date
We will continue to discuss various budget issues. However, thus far we have established the group’s opinion on numerous issues. These follow.
General Principles
The group has discussed and agreed on several general budgetary and fiscal principles. These include:
· Our work is not about politics. We are interested in providing objective citizen input to the Town of Cary. We are doing this because we believe it is important and we hope our input will be considered by Staff and Council.
· We are not attempting to balance the Town’s budget. Instead, we are offering input about citizen budget priorities.
· We have been working with the FY 2004 budget. We hope to be able to examine the FY 2005 budget in time to provide our input based on that budget proposal.
· We do not favor near-term “quick fix” revenue options that defer hard revenue/spending decisions
· We favor that money in a designated fund be used for that designated fund, rather than transferring between/among funds
Specific Budget Line Item Priorities
We have discussed various municipal services. We learned that the only service mandated by law is building inspections. We deemed the following services to be “essential”, or expected of a municipal government:
· Expected services (unless otherwise noted, unanimous agreement that these are “expected” services from local government; some do have “discretionary” components that are further discussed later):
o Police (1 dissenting voice – “sheriff’s department could handle this)
o Fire (1 dissenting voice – could be a shared service with other governments, e.g., county)
o emergency medical
o water
o sewer
o information services (offices for citizens to find out things about the town)
o roads
o transportation
o public parks
o health/restaurant inspections (provided by county)
o pest control
o trash collection
o planning & zoning
o “meet state regulations”
o economic development [some feel that this is discretionary]
o fiscal administration (budget/finance)
o general administration (legal, clerk)
o maintenance/operation of all of the above where they apply
We also ranked numerous items that we consider “discretionary” spending in terms of priority. These follow. Rankings are the group consensus/average, out of a possible rank of 10, with 10 being the highest:· Police:
o How important is it to have an SRO in every HS? 9
o Every middle school? 10
o Elementary schools? High, but not necessary to have one SRO dedicated to a single school 6-8 Are we willing to spend $900,000 to $1.2M to keep the current elementary school SRO program? Yes
· Sewer-related issues:
o Should the town take over private sewers in Cary (the portion of the sewers on private property)? No clear group consensus (high priority for those affected, low priority for others). But this is based on an incomplete understanding of the situation; need more data on this (about what constitutes “private” sewer and what the town should maintain vs. what HOAs are responsible for vs. what individual owners are responsible for?). Suggestion: set aside a portion of the water/sewer fees to address general problems with water/sewer throughout town. Suggestion: charge different rates if there are in fact different levels of service.
o Open space preservation (from a portion of sewer fees): high priority. o Stormwater: high priority, especially if considered along with other sewer items above
· Parks: #1 priority is maintenance (unanimous in group) – maintain what we have. Other priorities among the group: Renovate existing parks (especially Lexie Lane), complete projects in process (before starting new ones), get out of money-losing ventures, land acquisition (don’t need to build parks today, but acquire the land today), build a dog park, preserve open space, connect existing greenways, especially in older neighborhoods, support a low-cost recreational pool (minority view that one person supports the aquatics center – “exactly what the Cary voters approved in the bond issue”). We ought to look at the five options that have been proposed for the aquatics center and see if prefer any specific ones of those. Lowest priorities are aquatics “super center” as defined (much more support a low-cost center that was recreational in nature and for citizens), public art, public takeover of failing parks & recreation facilities (e.g., Tennis Center)
· TCAP/redevelopment: “dynamic downtown”: Anything done downtown should appeal to the “broad community”, not a “special interest” and be some sort of “active use”. Lots of ideas on all kinds of things that might be done with the old Cary Elementary building. Priorities for various downtown options:
o Support for preserving old Cary Elementary building: 8
o Parking: 8
o Sidewalks/streetscape 8; one dissenting voice for much lower ranking.
o Incentives/lower fees 7; one dissenting voice for 4 ranking
o New downtown park land acquisition: 6
o Stormwater remedies: What is the support for spending $5M - $8M to address stormwater problems in general? 9
· Transportation: Rail: Cary does not put any money into this.
o CTran: 8. Suggestion that we have a different fee structure that is very cheap for disabled/elderly, etc., even to the point of charging more for other riders. Also have more structured/regular routes.
· Volunteer organizations: ($78,000 given per year, divided among about 10 or 12 organizations. Requests this year exceed available funds). Suggestion that whatever money is available be equally divided among all qualifying groups. 4 people think we should not fund any non-profit groups whatsoever. Overall ranking not quantified, but was low.
· Public art: very low priority (1 person at 5 ranking; all the rest are 2 or below
I have drafted this "interim report" that consolidates our significant observations and findings thus far, along with some general background information.
Council's first budget work session is tomorrow (Wednesday 05/12), so I would like to send this report to them today. Please comment on the report!
Here it is:
Citizen Budget Review (“The People’s Money”)
Interim Report 05/10/2004
Introduction
This is an interim report of the Citizen Budget Review Committee. This group of volunteer citizens continues to meet to discuss the Town of Cary budget; however, we wish to summarize our work and discussions to date so that Cary Town Council can consider this input for their upcoming budget work sessions (capital budget 05/12/2004, operating budget 05/25/2004)
Mission Statement
This volunteer citizen group will examine the Town budget (2004/2005) in an objective manner and offer advisory input to Cary Town Staff and Town Council about fiscal issues, including revenue and spending priorities, individually and through group consensus.
Participants
Participants were not appointed or selected. Participants are those who volunteered to take part in this effort. Many citizens were initially invited by Council member Michael Joyce, and he encouraged those citizens to invite others. Many people heard about this initiative through e-mail; the Cary News also did a story on the committee and provided contact information for others who wished to take part. Anyone who expressed an interest in participating has been added to the group. Thus far we have had 26 citizen participants.
To date we have held 4 in-person meetings. Those who have participated in at least one meeting include the following citizens. For those who have participated in more than one meeting, the total number of meetings they have participated in is shown in parentheses. In addition to the in-person meetings, we have also had e-mail and on-line forum discussion of various budget issues.
Daryl Baker, Darryl Black, Kelly Commiskey (2), Spencer Combos, Ray Czarnecki, Matthew Danielson (4), Mike Dodson (4), Ken Elowitz, John Finn, Don Frantz (2), Karen Griffin (3), Cathy Heath (4), Mike Heath, Katherine Haney (2), Don Hyatt (3), Lynn Loots (2), Tom McCuiston, Brent Miller (4), Josh Mills, Cas Nowak (2), Betty Pickett, June Schmidt, Anita Porter, Bynum Walter, Matt Walter, Ron Woodard (3)
This is a diverse group of citizens – about 2/3 male, 1/3 female; living all over Cary (with one in the ETJ); having a wide variety of occupations; and political party affiliation of about ½ Republican, ¼ Democrat and ¼ Unaffiliated.
In addition to these citizens, Cary Town Council members have, at various times, attended some portions of certain meetings (for the record, a majority of Town Council members have not attended any single meeting). We appreciate attendance of Michael Joyce (who initiated this effort), Mayor Ernie McAlister, Mayor Pro Tem Jack Smith, Julie Robison and Jennifer Robinson. Adam Arnold of the Cary News also has attended one meeting. Robin Joyce facilitated logistics for getting the first meeting underway.
Discussion
We have had much valuable, varied and often lively discussion. It is not possible to go through every detail of every facet of the budget, so we have worked toward a process of identifying our budget and fiscal priorities so as to provide input for consideration by Town Staff and Town Council. This diverse group does not always unanimously agree on all issues, but we have found many issues where we have a very strong group consensus.
Committee Input To Date
We will continue to discuss various budget issues. However, thus far we have established the group’s opinion on numerous issues. These follow.
General Principles
The group has discussed and agreed on several general budgetary and fiscal principles. These include:
· Our work is not about politics. We are interested in providing objective citizen input to the Town of Cary. We are doing this because we believe it is important and we hope our input will be considered by Staff and Council.
· We are not attempting to balance the Town’s budget. Instead, we are offering input about citizen budget priorities.
· We have been working with the FY 2004 budget. We hope to be able to examine the FY 2005 budget in time to provide our input based on that budget proposal.
· We do not favor near-term “quick fix” revenue options that defer hard revenue/spending decisions
· We favor that money in a designated fund be used for that designated fund, rather than transferring between/among funds
Specific Budget Line Item Priorities
We have discussed various municipal services. We learned that the only service mandated by law is building inspections. We deemed the following services to be “essential”, or expected of a municipal government:
· Expected services (unless otherwise noted, unanimous agreement that these are “expected” services from local government; some do have “discretionary” components that are further discussed later):
o Police (1 dissenting voice – “sheriff’s department could handle this)
o Fire (1 dissenting voice – could be a shared service with other governments, e.g., county)
o emergency medical
o water
o sewer
o information services (offices for citizens to find out things about the town)
o roads
o transportation
o public parks
o health/restaurant inspections (provided by county)
o pest control
o trash collection
o planning & zoning
o “meet state regulations”
o economic development [some feel that this is discretionary]
o fiscal administration (budget/finance)
o general administration (legal, clerk)
o maintenance/operation of all of the above where they apply
We also ranked numerous items that we consider “discretionary” spending in terms of priority. These follow. Rankings are the group consensus/average, out of a possible rank of 10, with 10 being the highest:· Police:
o How important is it to have an SRO in every HS? 9
o Every middle school? 10
o Elementary schools? High, but not necessary to have one SRO dedicated to a single school 6-8 Are we willing to spend $900,000 to $1.2M to keep the current elementary school SRO program? Yes
· Sewer-related issues:
o Should the town take over private sewers in Cary (the portion of the sewers on private property)? No clear group consensus (high priority for those affected, low priority for others). But this is based on an incomplete understanding of the situation; need more data on this (about what constitutes “private” sewer and what the town should maintain vs. what HOAs are responsible for vs. what individual owners are responsible for?). Suggestion: set aside a portion of the water/sewer fees to address general problems with water/sewer throughout town. Suggestion: charge different rates if there are in fact different levels of service.
o Open space preservation (from a portion of sewer fees): high priority. o Stormwater: high priority, especially if considered along with other sewer items above
· Parks: #1 priority is maintenance (unanimous in group) – maintain what we have. Other priorities among the group: Renovate existing parks (especially Lexie Lane), complete projects in process (before starting new ones), get out of money-losing ventures, land acquisition (don’t need to build parks today, but acquire the land today), build a dog park, preserve open space, connect existing greenways, especially in older neighborhoods, support a low-cost recreational pool (minority view that one person supports the aquatics center – “exactly what the Cary voters approved in the bond issue”). We ought to look at the five options that have been proposed for the aquatics center and see if prefer any specific ones of those. Lowest priorities are aquatics “super center” as defined (much more support a low-cost center that was recreational in nature and for citizens), public art, public takeover of failing parks & recreation facilities (e.g., Tennis Center)
· TCAP/redevelopment: “dynamic downtown”: Anything done downtown should appeal to the “broad community”, not a “special interest” and be some sort of “active use”. Lots of ideas on all kinds of things that might be done with the old Cary Elementary building. Priorities for various downtown options:
o Support for preserving old Cary Elementary building: 8
o Parking: 8
o Sidewalks/streetscape 8; one dissenting voice for much lower ranking.
o Incentives/lower fees 7; one dissenting voice for 4 ranking
o New downtown park land acquisition: 6
o Stormwater remedies: What is the support for spending $5M - $8M to address stormwater problems in general? 9
· Transportation: Rail: Cary does not put any money into this.
o CTran: 8. Suggestion that we have a different fee structure that is very cheap for disabled/elderly, etc., even to the point of charging more for other riders. Also have more structured/regular routes.
· Volunteer organizations: ($78,000 given per year, divided among about 10 or 12 organizations. Requests this year exceed available funds). Suggestion that whatever money is available be equally divided among all qualifying groups. 4 people think we should not fund any non-profit groups whatsoever. Overall ranking not quantified, but was low.
· Public art: very low priority (1 person at 5 ranking; all the rest are 2 or below