Win One for the Gipper, Lose Six for Responsible Government

The City Council voted to not increase property taxes. Reagan would be
proud!

However, the City budget is still on a spending binge.
They seem obsessed with increasing personnel costs.
The $22,250 Mercer Salary Report suggested that several employees were
underpaid and several were overpaid. But this report is fundamentally
flawed because it fails to adjust for differences in community
populations. Eagle is not Boise. The community-size adjusted result is
that almost all Eagle city employee salaries are too high.

Ignoring the obvious defects of the report, the council voted to
increases salaries and also give a 3% cost of living adjustment.
The council was silent on the issue of overpaid employees.
Only Al Shoushtarian voted to be responsible with spending under our
current difficult economic conditions. Unfortunately he was a lone man
in the wilderness.

The Carry-Over account will still be $1 million less at the end of
next year. Lesson: Don't give teenagers credit cards.

The council voted to put some of the hypothetical savings into an
account but refused to create a specific account to buy the city hall
building. Mr. Guerber proposed making this account a general slush
fund with no restrictions on rewarding politically-connected friends

The first duty of leadership is to stop pretending. Recent figures
indicate that new construction in Eagle is still down 50% from last
year. Why are we still spending on the Planning and Building
Departments as if nothing has changed? Reality is knocking but nobody
wants to answer the door. We could save a million dollars this year
with no loss in service. Instead we'll spend money so people can look
busy.

As property values continue to slide, assessed values must be adjusted
downward. This means that property tax revenue will decline, unless
the levy rate is increased dramatically. Are you ready to see your
home equity disappear and your property taxes not go down?

We need a Transparency and Accountability Ordinance now. Taxpayers
should be able to see exactly where our money is being spent. Norm and
Al are working on getting this into the city code, so citizens can
look at the city check register online. Encourage them to move forward
on this worthy project.

The bottom line is this budget still invades our savings so spending
on bureaucracy can grow. Tip O'Neal would be proud.