How Much More Can We Spend?

So I've not written much about the city because I haven't had the time to follow up on some things that have really bothered me about the city council actions of late.  So I'm going to go over a couple of them here, even though I'm looking at them from one side, and have had no comments from any of the city councilmen.

First was 2 agenda items that were at this months city council.  The first was $28,000 (not budgeted) to have a flow study done of the water system.  There are problems on the northern end of town for water pressure, and complaints from industry that not only is it causing them issues, but it could be hazardous.  The second part of that was $11,000+ for a gis (I believe that was the term used) mapping of the water system. 

Now in my simple mind, how are you going to do #1 without having #2?  How can you tell how much water flow we have if you don't know what size pipes we have, where they are, how long there are, what valves are in place, etc, etc, etc?  Each and every one of those things are factors in your water flow. 

So I asked, all I got was "well they are going to have to do part of #2 to get #1, but it's different, we have to spend this $11,000.  Really?

Now if they had said, "The format they are going to present it to us won't be usable for anything after the study is done, but since the company will have all the information, they can give us a standardized mapping of our water system for $11,000, and we think after this we can keep it up ourselves, and when we loose employees their knowledge won't go away because we'll have it in digital format for the world to use" I might have at least understood we are paying for the upgrade to the model we just purchased.  But the way they made it sound was #1 was going to be magically produced without knowing exactly what our system consist of today. BS!

Second, why did we just 'award' this $40,000 without going out to bid on it?  I've noticed a lot of this going on lately.  The engineer will say, 'I've got so and so ready to go ahead as soon as you approve this project.....' and no bidding is going out?  Why?  Oh, it's ONLY $40,000, no need to? Really? Really? 

You know last I looked times were tough, and there are some hungry people out there that will work, and do a good job for less money all over the place. 

As long as I'm on that subject, I know we're closing in on a city manager.  I hope our city council has gotten their head around this.  I look and one of the 3 finalist appears to have 'resigned' or was going to be resigned (read 'fired') earlier this year.  I have a bad case of deja vue here. 

On top of which there are whisperings that the $70,000k range salary that we've paid our last city manager could be doubled, or close to it.  There is a 9%+ unemployment rate in this great country, and we're going to double our salary right from the start?  Where do we go from there?  Do like the last one and give him a 20% pay raise after 6 months?  People want to work, and there are plenty of qualified (and I stress the qualified) people who would kill for a $70,000 job right now.  They would kill for any job.  From $0 to $70,000, yeap, that's the ticket.  And even those employed right now, like the interim mayor of I believe Flatonia, knows this is a good job or he wouldn't of applied.

One, we are NOT in the position financially to pay that kind of salary.  Second, I believe if you look around, while there are those making that kind of money, it's not a typical salary for our size town.  So in this case I'm hoping I'm wrong, but I don't think I am. We'll know shortly though as I believe this weekend the council will decide on someone. 

Last, I couldn't make it to the meeting on 7/18 because my wife was in surgery.  I found at this council meeting the council approved $120,000 for a financial adviser.  What have I told you lately, every time they go in there is another $100,000 in unbudgeted moneys spent.   This guy has basically told us we could bond out, and borrow the $5,500,000 with a 20 year pay back of $9,000,000.  Using those type of figures, the entire $15,500,000 project will be $25,370,000.  How much will they have to jack up rates to cover that expense?  Let me tell you they can't jack them up far enough.  So once again, I see property taxes going up to pay for this.  Oh, and while our city financial has say he thinks we'll have a aaa rating, I'll bet anyone the best we'll get is a Ba rating.  Why?  Because or finances for the last several years have been in the red, and poorly managed.  So what does aaa to a Ba mean?  It means that $25,000,000 might not be high enough, because it will cost us more to get the loans (bonds).  And for the record, go back about a year in my blog when I first started when I said this would come to bite us in the butt later.  Guess what, later is now!

Good luck and Gods speed to our council this weekend as they finish deciding who will be our next city manager.  I hope the money we've spend weening them out was worth it, because whoever comes in will have to be a Houdini and pull money out of the empty coffers.  I hope they know what grant writing is all about and pull in enough cash to pay for themselves and put our town back on the financial stability, and infrastructure recovery we desperately need in this town.  

God Bless,
Dennis Nesser