It’s
not too sexy, but
it must be done. It’s the $1.2 billion draft policy budget, the city manager’s
proposal for the 1996-97 fiscal year, which councilmembers will deliberate,
probe, and pound their head against for the next two months, ending with some
sort of compromised acceptance in September. Suicide is optional.
Every year the budget is fraught with unexpected twists. This year the city’s
largest sugardaddy, the Electric Utility Department (EUD), must retain more
profit than usual to muscle up for looming competition. Which means that the
general fund, the patron of such metropolitan standards as police and fire
service, must lower its standard of living. In addition, three new branch
libraries must open, two neighborhood recreation centers must expand services,
city employees would like to get at least a 3% wage increase, and City Manager
Jesus Garza is proposing a $40 million bond sale that will require yearly
payments from the general fund. All of which leaves Garza with an unpleasant
$18 million shortfall.
To mend it, the city manager proposes eliminating 343 employee positions —
all but 50 of which are currently unfilled. He also proposes a one-cent
property tax increase per $100 of assessed value. Translated into English, the
average Austin homeowner will pay an extra $38 a year.
Those cuts, and here-and-there triflings elsewhere, make up the difference.
But politicians, of course, cringe when they hear the “T” word; some
councilmembers will no doubt comb the budget desperately seeking savings to
counter increased taxes. Others will look for spare change to underwrite their
pet projects.
One of the more noble projects, to be sure, is Jackie Goodman’s Citizen
Planning Committee, the group that wants to turn Austin into a menagerie of
small-town Americas. The city manager is offering $600,000, mostly to help
carry out the CPC’s vanguard recommendation — simplification of the Land
Development Code. But Goodman is seeking an additional $1,000,000 to help cover
the remainder of the CPC’s recommendations.
Not to be outdone, Mayor Bruce Todd yearns for the realization of his recently
announced goal to increase the police workforce from two police per every 1,000
Austinites to 2.5 police. Having the support of the council, not to mention the
doughnut shop lobby, Todd’s call for more men in blue cannot be achieved
without loads of moolah. Just how much is uncertain; the mayor’s office and the
police department are scrambling for an estimate. Regardless, it won’t be
cheap; in fact, it will probably be prohibitively expensive. Nonetheless,
Todd’s goal-specific call has particular momentum: Ronney Reynolds and Eric
Mitchell have long released air on the need to increase police, and the recent
campaign rhetoric on the subject still resonates with the public.
Hizonner’s solution to the police funding question? One option may be to apply
profits from the privatization of the city’s 11 health care clinics. The
clinics are federally funded and provide city-wide indigent care. The main
engine driving their privatization is that federal handouts are on the
downslide, and city staff fear that the funding for the clinics may drop. Sue
Milam, the director of Austin/Travis County Health & Human Services
Department, hopes that private management of the clinics, if it occurs, will
open up additional revenue and saving sources sufficient to maintain current
services. It could also provide a windfall of “five or six million dollars,”
says Trey Salinas, Todd’s executive assistant. The city manager generally
concurs, and suggests a potential “fee” from private industry in exchange for
managing the public clinics of “several million” dollars. Either scenario would
likely cover the first-time costs of increasing the five-o force.
But a few fast figures does not council approval make. Expect the
councilmembers to take a long, studied look at the benefits of increased
efficiency versus the loss of public accountability at the city’s clinics. That
process will likely begin at the July 24 work session, and if Todd has his way,
will end before the September budget scuffles.
Newcomer Daryl Slusher also has a nascent plan to raise money and stave off a
tax increase, though it could be nigh-impossible politically. Slusher thinks
the city’s Aviation Department, which has its own fund, should provide more
cash to the general fund. The discrepancy, as Slusher views it, is aviation’s
rent-free deal for real estate at the Robert Mueller Airport that’s owned by
the general fund. Slusher suggests an annual rent payment from the Aviation
Department to the general fund of somewhere around $500,000. But at a time when
the council is closely watching every cent that goes to the building of the
Bergstrom airport, that could prove difficult.
Other aspects of the draft policy budget are more in line with Slusher’s
campaign promise of cheaper government. The city manager, for instance,
proposes eliminating one of the city’s four assistant city managers, a move
Slusher has advocated for years. The prime target is ACM Oscar Rodriguez, who
was stripped of his managerial duties months ago and is now consigned to the
desperately conceived task of coordinating federal grant applications. Though
he’s well-liked by the council, notwithstanding Eric Mitchell, Rodriguez’s
release likely won’t see any obstruction from the council. They’re looking for
savings wherever they can.
As for cut suggestions and/or pet projects for Ronney Reynolds and Beverly
Griffith, they say they are still studying the budget and would not comment for
this article. Gus Garcia is on vacation. Mitchell runs from this reporter.
n
This week in council: It’s a slow week, but there is a resolution from
Reynolds and Mitchell requesting that Capital Metro board of directors join
with the city in requesting legislation to rededicate the transit authority’s
quarter-cent sales tax increase to fund public safety.
This article appears in July 12 • 1996 and July 12 • 1996 (Cover).