Putting A Face On Lino Lakes Budget Cuts
LINO LAKES - Last week, proposed Lino Lakes city budget cuts got personal.
At a budget work session on August 25, City Council members and department directors gathered while an audience of 50—mostly city employees—quietly listened to discussions of a recent budget proposal for 2010, which includes cuts of over $1 million. Those reductions would reduce the budget by 12.2% to $8,837,670 from the $10,064,722 budget adopted in December 2008.
Much of that savings is proposed to come from the elimination of personnel.
The most recent proposal included the elimination of roughly 13% of the city’s 80 staff positions.
City Planner Jeff Smyser, AFSCME union steward, passed out a copy of a letter from the city’s AFSCME members that asked council members to involve them in discussions surrounding the elimination of city services “which so thoroughly involve and depend on us.”
“We would like to work cooperatively to solve problems,” the letter said.
The Problem
Lino Lakes, recently named as one of the top 100 places to live by Money Magazine, is facing signifi cant decreases in revenues as property values take a tumble and the state has continued its Homestead Market Value Credit unallotments.
Earlier in the summer, council members had asked Rolek to come up with a 2010 budget that addressed forecasted decreases in taxable property market values over the next two years. Those decreases amount to 5.9% for taxes payable in 2010 and an anticipated 10% decrease in 2011.
But the city is also struggling to find dollars to make up for unpaid assessments related to improvements made within the Legacy at Woods Edge mixed use development next to City Hall. The city is liable for $569,084 in bond payments this year alone, regardless of whether the assessments remain unpaid.
Marshall Group, which foreclosed on the property aft er Hartford went belly up last year, is delinquent on its property tax payments as well.
“The city has zero recourse,” Rolek said.
Assessments were last paid in 2006 and the city has been making interfund loans—essentially taking money out of one account to put in another—to make the bond payments, an approach that Rolek said the city cannot continue indefinitely.
“Our tax capacity has dropped from $21 million to just under $20 million in just one year,” Rolek told council at one budget work session.
“Even if we were not to levy for that [Legacy] debt service payment, we would still have to reduce our tax levy by [$781,000] to maintain a level tax rate.”
Employees Speak Out
Employees, who were given the opportunity to address the council at their August 25 work session, shared their concerns.
Some of them wept.
“There’s so much more that we do that’s not [listed here],” said one, referring to job descriptions listed for positions proposed for elimination.
The proposal to shut two of the three service windows at City Hall would “devastate” the city’s service levels, said another.
Jackie Bowditch, a 12- year police department employee, said she would be willing to make a financial sacrifice to keep employees on.
Mechanic Lester Rydeen, who worked in the private sector for years before coming to work with the city, spoke highly of city employees. “They’re not [the] public employees that I used to make jokes about,” he said.
He said that the loss of personnel means the loss of the continuity of knowledge, which is passed from one employee to another. He urged the council to maintain that long-term continuity into the city’s future.
Said another, “You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.”The specifi c budget proposal includes: elimination of the city’s receptionist, recreation supervisor, recreation secretary, building inspector (1.5 full-time equivalents, or FTE’s), associate planner, community development secretary, part-time utility billing clerk, one street maintenance position, and various public safety positions and/or services including one sergeant, 1,040 patrol offi cer hours, and a community service officer, 10 FTE’s in total.
According to Rolek, this would bring non-public safety staff levels back to what they were in the 1990s.
What’s Next?
Under the proposal presented to council August 25, budget cuts requested by the council actually showed a decrease in the tax rate, which gave Council Member Dan Stoltz pause. “I am not willing to look good strictly on a tax rate to the detriment of services,” he said.
Further than that, council would not say; members have declined to go on record as to whether they would support a tax rate increase.
However, Rolek suggested that the council consider adopting a preliminary levy at its Sept. 14 meeting that “may be somewhat higher than where they want to be” with the idea that it can be reduced before it is finally adopted in December.
“That’s probably not a great way to do business in normal times, but these aren’t normal times,” Mayor John Bergeson said.
The maximum tax levy must be certifi ed to Anoka County by Sept. 15, but council has three months to fine-tune the preliminary 2010 budget until it adopts the final levy in December.
Council directed acting City Administrator Dan Tesch to contact union stewards to discuss employee contracts before the council met again on the matter last Monday, as The Citizen went to press.