The holiday season is upon us; and with it, come the reindeer games.
That’s the only way to really describe the December 7th City Council meeting, as the Mayor and City Council butted heads and locked horns over one issue after another. Council members Marshall, Barton and Murphy trotted and strutted before the audience, still smug about their recent veto override victory and ready to dish out more punishment for the Mayor. Read the rest of this entry »
How come I never heard of Congressman Anthony Weiner before today?
“The health insurance industry shouldn’t exist at all, because unlike a pharmaceutical company that is producing…at least they have someone doing research trying to make someone healthy. A health insurance company is just making money on the transaction, and really not contributing anything to the end product.”
So, basically the entire health insurance industry is just a big middle man. I guess I always knew that, but I never really thought about it in those terms. That being said, it makes me wonder why the right is so obsessed with preserving it.
Their big argument against bringing government into anything is that it contributes no value, increases costs and adds layers of beaurocracy. What’s the difference? Read the rest of this entry »
Years ago, in my advertising agency days, I carried around this Harry Beckwith book called Selling the Invisible. It is a great collection of anecdotes about marketing and idea pitching. One that stands out for me is a story about Jay Chiat, who crafted some of America’s most memorable advertising campaigns – American Express, Apple Computer, Nike, the Energizer Bunny and others.
Chiat said that one of the secrets to his success was this little card he carried with him, and broke out whenever he found himself at an impasse with someone. It said “Maybe he’s right.”
I’ve thought about that recently, as the debates over local politics have become increasingly heated. Property tax caps, LOIT, public safety cuts, etc. have all brought concerned citizens of our city into conflict with one another over what the status quo is, what needs to change, and how to change it. The only thing we can seem to agree on is that the conflicts and infighting have done nothing to move us forward; and now, I have come to believe that the wrangling, and the impasse that results, is actually the status quo that needs to change.
As a result, I’ve come around to Chiat’s way of thinking: Maybe the people I disagree with are right. That being said, I’m going to propose the idea that we as a community go along with the Mayor and the tax repeal advocates that support her.
Every day is a shite storm in Muncie, it seems.
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.
As President Obama settles into his third month in office, a long-raging debate continues over whether the best place to find the answer to our economic woes – government spending or tax cuts?
I’m going to go with spending.
The idea of lowering taxes to increase revenues has been given a fair try. Twice in our lifetime, and once before that. What it results in are massive deficits, unemployment, the evisceration of vital programs like education and health care, and increases in local regressive taxes, such as property and sales tax. Read the rest of this entry »
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.
It’s time to stop the insanity.
Norm Stamper, retired Seattle Police Chief, pens a great column comparing the use of marijuana and alcohol.
“Over the past four years I’ve asked police officers throughout the U.S. (and in Canada) two questions. When’s the last time you had to fight someone under the influence of marijuana? (I’m talking marijuana only, not pot plus a six-pack or a fifth of tequila.) My colleagues pause, they reflect. Their eyes widen as they realize that in their five or fifteen or thirty years on the job they have never had to fight a marijuana user. I then ask: When’s the last time you had to fight a drunk? They look at their watches.”
Read the rest of the story here.
A lot of people on the right are complaining that the media isn’t taking their teabagging parties Tea Party Rallies seriously.
Perhaps it’s because they are professionally-organized events disguised (thinly) as spontaneous groundswells.
Maybe it’s because right-wing histrionics and silly stunts aren’t really news, except to Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity fans.
It also doesn’t help that some of the attendees are their own worst enemies. In Cincinnati, the crowd chased away the media, including reporters from the CBS news affiliate.
Here’s some coverage from Cleveland.
Enjoy more tea party highlights: They’re sure to be enlightening and entertaining.
Also, if Glenn Beck is supposed to be there, odds are pretty good that he’ll do something nutty. Read the rest of this entry »
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.
Jim Arnold writes:
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 »
