In a flash flood of dollar signs reminiscent of the tempest that assaulted the city only a few days earlier, the council ratified next year's $1.2 billion budget in less than three hours on Monday, September 11. The plan, disapproved of by Max Nofziger and Brigid Shea, is effective October 1. It will cost the average homeowner an extra $33.45 in the next fiscal year, the result of a half-cent property tax increase which will bring $1.2 million into city coffers. Also, residential utility ratepayers will see an increase in the transportation fee, offset by a decrease in the drainage fee.
Only Brigid Shea and Jackie Goodman attempted to stave off higher taxes, the rest of the council holding fast to the city manager's refrain that a tax hike would prevent further deterioration of the city's infrastructure. This, despite the newfound availability of some $5.2 million in orphan money, accumulated primarily through lower-than-expected employee health benefits (saving $1.15 million), and a $3.9 million windfall in sales tax revenue due to a change in accounting guidelines set by the Governmental Accounting Standards Board which added an extra month of sales tax revenue to this fiscal year.
With the latter overage, the city manager proposed establishing a just-in-case capital reserve fund, in case next year's expected sales tax revenue takes a nose-dive. A city staff entreaty that the council safeguard the cash for at least six months was challenged almost immediately. Just after the meeting got underway, Goodman seconded a Shea motion that some of the fund counterbalance the proposed tax increase. It withered quickly in the face of a five-vote opposition.
Shea raised her hand again. The motion: Apply some of the
$1.65 million
in sales tax revenue previously earmarked for the baseball stadium to offset
the tax hike. The conclusion: a 6-1 slaughter. The rest of the council followed
the city manager's plea to use $1.575 million of the money to acquire
right-of-way along Manchaca Rd., between Slaughter and Matthews Rd. The state
decided to begin extending the road this year; the city is legally obligated to
do its part. The other $75,000 will pay for undetermined amenities for senior
citizens at Bartholomew park.
The council's decision to ask voters on Oct. 7 to spend $10 mil-lion in general obligation bonds for the stadium, instead of issuing them this month without voter approval, also preserved $800,000, the previously expected debt service. The savings will be credited to the general obligation debt service fund.
Back to the meeting. With a semblance of Shea's frugality, Goodman threw in her own two cents, a $46,000 savings transferable to the EMS operating budget. Most were discovered by the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), including a $38,000 cut from employee benefits in Public Works and Human Resources. Goodman's package passed unanimously, allowing EMS employees more basic training, says EMS Jefe Sue Edwards.
Many of those employees - and all city employees "period," says AFSCME Prez Carol Guthrie - feel slighted that their suggested savings were not used for an across-the-board, 3% raise. It would have cost $4 million; according to Guthrie, the union found $6 million in savings, including the aforementioned $1.15 million in reduced health care expenses.
They got nowhere on that, but Max Nofziger did proffer a motion to take $185,000 from a test program that offers skill-based raises and use it for longevity-based raises, meaning about 700 employees instead of 300 would see a heftier paycheck.
Four departments offer the skill-based raises to some employees. Edwards, whose department offers the prototype, presented a humorous and somewhat frightening defense to retain the program: "Not everyone in the city knows what their jobs are." It didn't work; the transfer passed with Gus Garcia, Bruce Todd, and Ronney Reynolds opposed.
Next up was another Nofziger item: to use $40,000 from the capital reserve fund to repair trees felled by the mini-hurricane that popped out windows at the city hall annex shortly after the Sept. 7 council meeting. Todd said no way, jealously guarding the reserve. Reynolds beseeched the council to wait for a damage assessment from the Parks Department. Without missing a beat, Nofziger casually pulled out a PARD memo calling for the replacement of 100 trees, a $40,000 expenditure. Reynolds was stumped; the item passed, Reynolds, Mitchell, and Todd against.
Reynolds gets credit for leading an uncontended charge to lower the drainage fee, assessed on utility bills for drainage and erosion control. The unanimously approved decision means $2.2 million less in revenue, a sum the utility will reimburse from a fat reserve account that city auditors say has no explicit purpose. As a result, residential customers will see their monthly bill decrease from $3.82 to $3.30 a month. Business rates will fall from $45.84 for each acre occupied to $35.67.
The decrease will help offset an increase in the transportation fee, which replenishes a fund used for street maintenance. The vote proved that all things are possible at council chambers. Responding to implications from Shea that past fees collected by the Transportation Department have not brought adequate results, Reynolds said, memorably, "Brigid Shea is correct." Both made overtures for an audit of the fund. But a vote to suspend the increase drew only the support of Goodman and Shea; Reynolds and Nofziger abstained, and the rest of the council dissapproved.
The approval of other programs once marked for elimination accounted for the $1.2 million tax increase. Shea voted thumbs-down for each one. They include:
* A $300,000 expenditure to match a $1.65 million federal grant for 22 new police officers.
* Almost $13,000 to perform taxicab inspections, an item pushed by Mitchell to ensure that tourists have a pleasant experience with the city's taxicab franchisees.
* A $100,000 allowance to Jourdan-Bachman Pioneer Farm, about half what the park got last year. The microcosm of life in the old days is currently in search of additional funding.
* Around $200,000 apiece for the VICTORY tutoring program (Nofzig-er joined Shea in opposition) and the David Powell AIDS clinic.
Late in the meeting, Mitchell called for an additional $20,000 from the contingency reserve, to go to the Black Arts Alliance. Black artists have traditionally received only a morsel of the city's arts endowment. In fact, blacks represented less than a 3% share of $1.9 million awarded this year. Officials with the Parks Department, from whence the funds come, say the small figure is due to a dearth of black applicants, 12 from a total of 181. Still, on the average, black grantees received about $5,000 in funding compared to around $12,000 for other applicants.
Nofziger argued that the Alliance should shoulder the blame; they've funded just one artist in two years. After Nofziger's rant petered out, Mitchell replied civilly that black artists are discouraged from applying because they know "the deck is stacked against them." unanimously checkmarked the increase, Nofziger was off the dais.
Finally, as the council readied to vote on the entire budget, Shea let fly yet a third attempt to steady taxes. She asked for $500,000 from the capital reserve, $571,000 in cuts proposed by AFSCME, and a $150,000 proposal to axe one assistant city manager and his/her assistant. Shea opines that the recent transfer of one of the city's biggest entities, Brackenridge Hospital, to a private entity should result in less top-level staff. Staff says not so, since hospital oversight was the domain of the city manager himself. Shea did not propose cutting the city manager. Had she, her proposal would still have failed without a second.
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With the mayor in Washington attending an inter-governmental relations conference, Garcia emceed last week's regular councilmeeting, a drab little affair that lacked much news value. All but two items passed on consent. For one of those, the council, in their role as the Austin Housing Finance Corporation, unanimously gifted six city-owned Eastside lots to a neighborhood development entity, the Anderson Community Development Corporation. (Shea too was in Washington for a sustainable cities conference.)
The ACDC wants to use the lots, at East 12th near Angelina St., for duplexes, says Gene Watkins, former city housing director and a partner in the proposed development. The duplexes will be proximate to, but separate from, the ACDC's proposed 75-unit development of single-family houses called the Scattered Cooperative In-fill Housing Program II (SCIP II).
In opposition to the wishes of an adjacent Hispanic neighborhood, represented by GAIN (Guadalupe Association of Independent Neighborhoods), both developments will be rental, rather than owner-occupied. No GAIN members attended the council meeting; perhaps because the meeting's backup material contained no information that duplexes, often considered multi-family housing with less stable tenants, are now a part of ACDC's plans.
This week in council: A week off. The next meeting is Sept. 28. n