Yesterday’s StarPress featured an article on the City Council’s plans to introduce new LOIT taxes, in an effort to bridge our City’s funding gaps.
You can imagine the reaction.
Like everyone else, I don’t enjoy paying taxes; any more than I enjoy paying for utilities, gasoline, medical bills or anything else. Like those other things, though, I recognize both the necessity and the benefit of paying for them.
I meet people every day that say to me “government produces nothing,” or make comparisons between taxes and “reaching into your neighbor’s pocket;” and quite honestly, it frustrates me. I understand that there is an anger and anxiety that drive such sentiments, as well as a sense that our tax dollars are being wasted at every turn; and to some extent, there is validity to those feelings.
But there is also an irrationality behind them. To say that government produces nothing suggests that roads, schools, public safety, rule of law, etc. would just magically materialize on their own. To compare paying for public services to robbing your neighbor suggests that we don’t have an obligation to support public services; but rather that they are an entitlement of sorts. And while no one can argue that there isn’t fraud, waste and abuse when it comes to local government’s stewardship of tax dollars, the picture that is painted is at best a caricature – the waste comprises a small portion of the overall budget, not a majority.
The other comment I hear oft-repeated has to do with local government “living within their means,” and “living on a budget, like the rest of us have to.” The fundamental problem I have with those attitudes is that the two represent very different dynamics. Managing your personal finances revolves around making decisions that best benefit you, personally – it is a “me” proposition. Government operations, on the contrary, are about providing collective services and managing the things individual citizens can’t manage themselves – which is more of a “we” proposition.
Yes, the city is in crisis, to answer the question posed by Tuesday’s front page headline.
There is certain to be much continued discussion over who’s to blame. Republicans will continue to rattle off lists of Democrats, and vice versa. Members of anti-tax groups will blame the City Council, members of the Council will blame the Mayor, the Mayor will blame the unions, and it will go on and on and on. At the crux of this round-robin of finger-pointing will be endless debates over what to cut and how much; and lost in the din will be all of the sustainable suggestions.
The time has come to shout above the noise: I believe that, in pursuit of misguided political objectives, our city is being taken the wrong direction. The answer is not to try and cut our way out of this, but rather to build our way out.
Whenever I read thoughtless suggestions like “just cut X% across the board,” or “get rid of the deputy mayor,” or some other such position; it’s usually followed by some mission-accomplished sort of proclamation. “See? Problem solved.”
Except it’s not. We still can’t pave or even clean up our streets. Our fire department is one flat tire away from being incapacitated. Our police department is still using ’80s-era technology. Why would anyone want to move to, or more importantly, invest in a city that so clearly can’t manage itself?
Next year we’ll still have to cut more, and then more after that, and so on. If we eviscerate the city government now, what do we eliminate next year, or the year after that?
Such discussion always reminds me of the disgraced surgeon in Stephen King’s Survivor Type, stranded on an island, slowly eating himself, and rationalizing each amputation along the way – until finally, he’s left with only his hands and his hunger.
Some people out there want to see that, or at least claim to. They see it as a means to further reducing, or eliminating altogether, one tax or another. Already, they’ve successfully created this myth that Muncie residents are over-taxed and the city government is wasteful and corrupt, and many people have bought into it. That’s simply not the reality, though.
Sure, there are problems in our government, and there are people that are dishonest, or suck at their jobs; just like in any workplace. Muncie, however, has the cheapest government of any similarly-sized city in Indiana. We spend less on city government, services, and police and fire protection, than Bloomington, Anderson, Terre Haute, etc. – cities that also happen to be prospering more than we.
Insisting that, year after year, we make ourselves less of a city is, in my opinion, a short-sighted fool’s approach.
The answer, I believe, is to increase our resources to match our needs. There are many, many opportunities out there for bringing more money into Muncie – opportunities that don’t involve raising taxes – we only have to avail ourselves of them.
In the short-term, there are grants available for just about every aspect of municipal government. The $1M each that the Mayor says must be cut from the police and fire departments can be obtained through a handful of currently-available grants – grants that the Mayor has refused to pursue.
In the mid-term, there are various fundraising campaigns that can be developed. Many of our city’s financial problems break down into very manageable pieces, when divided amongst many people. In a city of 67,000, I’m pretty certain that I can find 5,000 people willing to pay $50 a year to keep the streets plowed in the winter, or $10 a year to cover the costs of public access television. I’ve already found enough people willing to cover the $15K a year we stand to gain by closing the downtown fire station. It took about a day.
The long-term solutions are more complex, and will involve the cooperation of many organizations and businesses. But the good news is that some of them have already proven themselves to be successful. Muncie Gras, for example, brings in tens of thousands of dollars in one night, and basically funds Downtown Development’s operations for the year.
Creating more destination events – things that draw people into Muncie from outside areas to shop and spend – is a way to not only generate revenues for the City, but also benefits business owners and improves the quality of life for residents. They are also the exact sorts of things that help to promote Muncie in terms of business development.
Why isn’t City Hall pursuing, or even considering these ideas? Perhaps, because they don’t serve the anti-union political agenda of the Mayor, and the small group of people that were instrumental in getting her elected. If there is another reason, she’s certainly not telling us what it is; despite having a blog, a website and media outlets at her disposal.
Regardless of her rationale, hers is the wrong direction, and the wrong message. Clean, safe streets; the security of property; efficient city services and economic development are not luxuries; nor are they out of reach. It’s easy enough to throw up your hands and say “oh well, we’re broke and we can’t afford it,” but that’s a coward’s response.
It takes courage to try, courage to set aside your own personal interests, and courage to lead. Our city is in crisis. Can we see a little courage?
The current crisis over the Muncie Fire Department’s vehicle fleet has been building over many years, and has now come to a head. Despite repeated request for equipment budgeting, the current and past city administrations have chosen to try and force the department to choose between manpower and other needs, in an effort to weaken the firefighter’s union.
Now the consequences of that single-minded approach to dealing with the city’s public safety needs have come to bear, and we are faced with paying a premium for our poor planning. As is often the case, the suggested responses to this crisis are as short-sighted as the thinking that got us into this mess in the first place: Close stations, lay off firefighters, replace professionals with volunteers and other variations on the theme of trading manpower for equipment.
As Einstein famously said, no problem can be solved by the same thinking that created it. There are other options out there for us to explore.
Look at Anderson. They have nearly 10K fewer people, but have 126 personnel in eight stations covering a 40 square mile area (as opposed to our 25 ). Coverage is not all about population.
Their fleet has only one vehicle over ten years old, and it’s a 1995 Sabre - as opposed to Muncie’s fleet, whose newest vehicle is 23 years old. They don’t buy used vehicles anymore, and they pay cash, both of which save the taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars.
How do they do it? For starters, they operate their own EMS. It nets them about $1M per year, all of which goes into a fund specifically for fire equipment and buildings. That means that their near $10M budget doesn’t have to account for vehicles or building maintenance.
Also, they take full advantage of available grants. One of the many grants available is the federal SAFER grant, which I imagine we would easily qualify for.
Bloomington, on the flip side, has around 10K more people than we do, but a slightly smaller coverage area of 19 square miles. They have five stations, 99 personnel on staff and much more up-to-date vehicle fleet (of course, we don’t exactly set a high bar to get over).
Their $8M budget, however is supplemented by IU to the tune of over $1M/year. Granted IU is roughly twice the size of BSU, but BSU only pays $100K/year for their contract with MFD. That’s about 1% of our total FD budget, despite the fact that the university makes up 10% of the coverage area and over 25% of the city’s population.
As an aside, both cities also have public safety-friendly mayors. Anderson’s previous administration, however, was much like ours in that they often grappled with the FD in the interest of union-busting. They got voted out in their last election, though, and some of them are now part of our current administration.
The point is that there are lots of ideas out there that don’t involve drastic cuts to an already small department, potentially jeopardizing public safety, as well as our city’s ISO rating - which Chief Clevenger indicated at Monday’s City Council meeting is a very real threat that would result in higher property insurance premiums for everyone.
Also, we can learn much from our neighbors about how to fund and staff our department in ways that don’t involve raising taxes.
Pursuing those ideas, however, means putting aside the animosity that exists towards MFD, and foregoing the underlying objective of ridding the city of unions.
It’s not a game. Lives, property and livelihoods are at stake here. Let’s all stop playing politics and bashing one another, and come together to solve this problem.
I have been painfully pondering words with which to pontificate on the current legislative session that has failed to lock in property tax caps, failed to endorse the Kernan-Shepard recommendations and has proposed an unprecedented one-year budget that spends $800 million more than anticipated revenues.
Words that illustrate our legislators’ poor performance include appalling, atrocious, dismal, disgusting, dreadful, horrendous, pathetic, lackluster and lackadaisical.
Prose that paints an appropriate picture of the mood of taxpayers contains words like, angry, annoyed, perturbed, disturbed, enraged, irate, incensed, fuming and furious.
Jargon to describe taxpayers’ disposition include swindled, scammed, snookered, bamboozled, fleeced, flimflammed, hoodwinked, hornswoggled and hung out to dry.
Citizens reluctantly deferred protest when HB 1001 raised sales taxes by nearly 17 percent, as we were promised property-tax caps in the bargain. Many were skeptical when the sales-tax increase was immediate, whereas the corresponding tax caps were scheduled to be phased in over three years, but we held our tongues in the hopes that our legislators would honor the promise of HB 1001.
If any of the words listed above describe how you feel about the current legislative session and your middle name isn’t Apathy, please contact your legislators by phone, letter or e-mail and remind them that they work for us. Ask them to pass Senate Joint Resolution 1 to lock in the property tax caps, review the Kernan Shepard recommendations and pass a two-year balanced budget that demonstrates fiscal responsibility.
Or maybe they hear what you’re saying, but have determined that you are wrong.
Why does no one ever want to consider that possibility?
The job of legislators is not to do what the voters tell them to, for better or worse; but rather to study the issues and make the decision that he/she believes best represents his/her constituents’ interests. Read the rest of this entry »
February 4, 2009 at 12:07 pm · Filed under Finish Ahead
In two weeks time, President Barack Obama has done what George Bush failed to do for nearly eight years: He made a mistake, admitted it and is working to rectify it.
“I screwed up.
“I’ve got to own up to my mistake. Ultimately, it’s important for this administration to send a message that there aren’t two sets of rules — you know, one for prominent people and one for ordinary folks who have to pay their taxes,” Obama said on NBC’s “Nightly News with Brian Williams.”
Change was the big buzzword during the campaign; and after President Obama’s election, the expectations couldn’t have been higher. From the very first days of the transition, every decision, every cabinet choice, was closely scrutinized and gauged for it’s “change value.” Then, as familiar faces filled the cabinet selections, critics lined up to gloat about how, at the end of the day, all we could really expect was more of the same.
It turns out, though, that those comparisons were superficial. The real evidence of significant change came yesterday, after Tom Daschle withdrew his name from consideration for Secretary of Health and Human Services, when the President went on national television and admitted he had made a mistake.
The real change is a leader that takes responsibility for what happens on his watch, even if he personally wasn’t the one that fumbled the ball. This is in stark contrast to the former occupant that – even when asked directly – could not bring himself to admit that he had ever made a mistake until his farewell speech, three weeks ago (and is something the former vice-president has still yet to do).
“It’s not never making mistakes;” the President said, “it’s owning up to them and trying to make sure you never repeat them and that’s what we intend to do.”
A few weeks ago I wrote a guest column in the paper, comparing Muncie to George Bailey, the larger point of which was to suggest that maybe the residents of Muncie should rally around the city that has been so good to them for so long.
Not surprisingly, most of the responses I received all focused on one little sentence in the thirteenth paragraph.
In trying to demonstrate that the economic problems we face are not as insurmountable as they have been characterized to be, I suggested that the difference between deficit and surplus could be bridged with a hundred dollar bill.
You’d have thought from some of the responses I received that it had suggested a doubling of property taxes. One comment really stood out for me, though. A reader wrote “I don’t have a problem with $100, it’s the $900 in property taxes that I have a problem with!!!”
The holiday season is here, and no December is complete without a cozy evening spent with the Bailey’s, Viola, Bert & Ernie and the rest of the friendly folks of Bedford Falls.
George Bailey, arguably one of the greatest movie characters ever written, embodies all of the qualities we admire and aspire towards. Selfless, thoughtful and humble, George loves his “crummy old town” and all of the people in it, much more than even he realizes. Despite the quiet desperation he harbors for the relinquished plans of his youth, he faces every challenge that presents itself to his community, and always does what he truly believes is best for the people around him – even if that choice doesn’t benefit him at all, personally.
When George finds himself in dire financial straits – caused not by him, but by another’s honest mistakes – his spirit is saved from despair by both the realization of how many people’s lives he’s touched, and the warm generosity and gratitude displayed by those same fellow citizens.
I often wonder how George Bailey would have fared here in Muncie.
More and more I read comments posted on various websites from individuals lecturing readers about personal responsibility, touting the importance of accepting the consequence of one’s actions and chastising public officials for lacking the courage of their convictions. All done anonymously, of course.
Is it really any wonder that the universe is collapsing?
The current crisis over the Muncie Fire Department’s vehicle fleet has been building over many years, and has now come to a head. Despite repeated request for equipment budgeting, the current and past city administrations have chosen to try and force the department to choose between manpower and other needs, in an effort to weaken the firefighter’s union.
Michelle Obama had a “wardrobe malfunction” today, and in front of England’s Queen Elizabeth to boot.
In two weeks time, President Barack Obama has done what George Bush failed to do for nearly eight years: He made a mistake, admitted it and is working to rectify it. 
A few weeks ago I wrote a guest column in the paper, comparing Muncie to George Bailey, the larger point of which was to suggest that maybe the residents of Muncie should rally around the city that has been so good to them for so long.
The holiday season is here, and no December is complete without a cozy evening spent with the Bailey’s, Viola, Bert & Ernie and the rest of the friendly folks of Bedford Falls.
More and more I read comments posted on various websites from individuals lecturing readers about personal responsibility, touting the importance of accepting the consequence of one’s actions and chastising public officials for lacking the courage of their convictions. All done anonymously, of course.