Millage increase rooted in budget decisions past
To the editor:
Our city administration now asserts that the economy and the reduction of property values are the basis causing the gigantic increase in millage rate for our general government operations (general fund) budget. That, of course, is true but it is not the complete reason the problem is as high as it is. The added burden goes back many years. Let’s start in November of 2000 wen I was elected mayor. The general fund budgets that were adopted for fiscal years 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005 all increased the general fund budget each at a rate that exceeded the combined rate of population growth and inflation. When argued each year that the percentage rate of increase should not exceed the combined rate of growth and inflation, except for an emergency, the city administration scoffed at my position. The city manager told the city council that my position had “no relevancy to the general fund budget.”
During those fiscal years the city council agreed with the city manager and voted for budget increases from about 11 to 14 percent whereas if limited by growth and inflation should only have been about 6 to 8 percent. It should be obvious that a city cannot continue to spend at such a rate without having our problem because it is obvious that property values could not continue to rise at the rates experienced in 2003 to 2007.
When I left office in April 2005, the new mayor and city council passed the city manager’s budgets for fiscal years 2006 and 2007. Those general fund budgets were a 60 percent increase in just those two years. The general city operations budget went from $100 million in 2005 to $160 million in 2007. The city, having spent on an elevated plateau, now has caused an added problem to our reduced property values. Moreover the city administration had to know that the high rate of property value increases could not continue at that rate. The city administration’s position was like one who, having jumped off the roof of a 20-story building says as he falls past the 10th floor, so far so good. The city administration today cannot complain solely of the darkness of its problem when it has also dimmed the lights.
Arnold E. Kempe
Cape Coral