Editor’s note: City Manager Matt Zimmerman outlined a three-step plan of budget cuts recently to help balance the City of Emporia’s 2008 general fund. In this four-part series, The Gazette looks at each step and possibilities for generating revenue.
If put to a vote, most cities’ programs would fail, says Emporia’s city manager.
“That’s Budgeting 101,” City Manager Matt Zimmerman said recently. “If you were to take every single program in the typical municipal budget and put it to a referendum every year, only two programs would gain enough votes to say ‘Yes, I would tax myself for that’ — police and fire-ambulance.
“Almost any other service will fail because there’s never a majority of citizens that want those services.”
That thinking leaves cities with a challenge — which services does everyone get taxed for to satisfy the minority who wants them? Some like public works and street lights aren’t hard to justify. Others take more consideration.
Zimmerman and the Emporia City Commission stand now at that point while trying to balance the 2008 general fund, which needs $2.5 million in reductions.
Zimmerman first proposed striking all new proposed jobs, then suggested cutting almost every project in the capital improvement plan. Then, and only then, did he take a red pencil to operating costs that are more likely to inflame the public.
The city commission found that out last year when, as a trial balloon, then-City Manager Steve Commons proposed eliminating the taxi coupon program, which allows a discount of $2 a ride for the elderly, disabled and poor.
A massive outcry forced the commission into retreat on that fight and on a subsequent discussion about eliminating the animal shelter’s manager.
Now, taxi coupons, a $46,500 budget item, are back on the chopping block. So are funds for the Emporia Municipal Band, most of the city’s travel and training budget and the July 4 fireworks show.
Some of the proposed cuts have created a few fireworks all by themselves.
“There are some things in here ... that have been attempted in the past that have not gone over well,” Commissioner Jeff Longbine warned in a recent meeting.
“Those are going to be controversial,” Commissioner Bobbie Agler agreed. “Those are going to be the tough ones.”
Why did you cut that?
The proposed operational cuts come to $213,500, making it the lightest hit in Zimmerman’s plan. They also would be the first Zimmerman says he would put back in the budget, if possible.
“If you said, ‘Put back in $88,000,’ most of it would be in operations,” he said.
At recent meetings on the city’s proposed budget, some residents have asked if an across-the-board reduction in every program would be better than singling out a few to lose all their funding.
That sort of “incremental budgeting” approach has been common for cities. A city assumes it’ll do everything it did last year and makes small changes in the budget year by year. Programs may be under-funded but they rarely will be cut entirely.
But Emporia’s city commission decided it wanted to follow more of an outcome-based budgeting method this year — set goals, decide how to meet them and fund accordingly.
Budgeting, using this method, is done by program rather than line item. It’s the difference between saying “How much should I spend on movies this year?” and saying “Should I go to the movies at all this year or would the money be better spent somewhere else?”
Reducing funding instead of eliminating it isn’t out of the question, Zimmerman said, adding that the discipline to lessen cuts usually doesn’t last. Within a couple of years, reduced funding tends to creep back to the prior, higher level, he said.
So why have these cuts in particular been proposed? Everything has one thing in common — no assets to eliminate, the city manager said.
There are no cars to sell, no buildings to put on the market or reassign. They are cuts that can be made cleanly — fiscally speaking, anyway — compared to other quality-of-life services like the aquatic center or the animal shelter, which come with assets.
Zimmerman added that quality of life has to be one factor in making budget decisions.
“Even if you don’t use the golf course or the zoo or the municipal band, does it make the quality of life better because it’s here and that way, your neighbors are happier?” he asked.
Why not cut that?
Some online posters to The Gazette’s budget forums have proposed other ideas for cuts. Two of the more common suggestions have been to sell the city’s golf course or even the municipal airport. Both may be trickier than they appear.
In the case of the airport, Zimmerman said, it’s common for Federal Aviation Administration grants to specify that an airport must be publicly held. If that’s the case here, he said, a lot of federal money could dry up quickly, including dollars the airport may soon seek for a runway extension.
Federal money doesn’t apply to the golf course, but it’s still not a gimme, he said. Even if the golf course were sold, it wouldn’t happen in the 2008 budget year. For example, a relatively amiable sale of Lake Kahola where a buyer was already at hand took years for the city to decide and then months to reach a final agreement once the decision was made.
Time is of the essence for the 2008 budget as state law requires. Plus, the airport is a next-door neighbor to the golf course. If the city goes ahead with an expanded runway project, the golf course’s layout will need to be changed to fit federal safety requirements, which could reduce its appeal to a buyer.
Economics also play a role. The golf course may not make enough to pay for itself — few city courses do — but how many sales tax dollars do its tournaments bring to town? For how many new businesses might the golf course be apart of the quality of life potential new employers want to see? City officials have to juggle these considerations.
An alternative could be to raise golf course fees and make it pay for itself, some think. A number of golfing fees are expected to go up next year, bringing in another $26,200 or so. But there’s only so far you can take that, Zimmerman said.
“If you double the fees and half the people use it, you’ve gained nothing,” he said.
What do we do next?
For the programs on the firing line, decisions are down to the essentials — how do we keep going? And should we continue?
Emporia Main Street asked for $5,000 of additional funding from the city to help with start-up costs for a new development effort. The funds would have made things happen more quickly, Executive Director Kayla Oney said, but the group’s efforts will go on without the money.
“We do understand the budget situation with the city, so we weren’t holding out high hopes,” she said. “But if you don’t ask, you won’t get.”
Zane Brown of DZ Cab is in a different situation. Currently, he gets $2 from the city for every taxi coupon. Since taxi coupon riders also pay $2, that means he gets $4 per ride, discounted from the usual $5 rate. Go any lower, Brown said, and he can’t afford to keep up the business.
“If we lose money on that, I can’t pay my drivers,” he said. “I’m not going to get rich. It pays my bills and that’s it.”
Still, there may be options. Some people, Brown said, have suggested reducing the discount. Taxi coupon riders would pay $3 a ride and the city would contribute $1 rather than $2. The rides still would be slightly discounted, but the city’s costs would be cut in half.
Another possibility, Brown said, would be for the taxi company to keep a list of coupon customers and charge them $4 instead of $5 — not much of a discount, but better than nothing.
This is the second year in a row that Brown and his coupon customers have had to fight for city funding. He says it’s getting tiring.
“I’ll do what I can to help,” he said. “But if this continues to be an every-year issue, I’m not going to put up with it much longer than I have to. If they think $50,000 is too much to get citizens where they need to go, they shouldn’t have started it in the first place.”
It’s a new fight for the municipal band and it’s an unwelcome one. The band has received city money since 1941, but public funding has a longer history than that. A prior incarnation of the band received a .03 mill levy in 1930, an amount that would be worth about $43,000 today.
The band’s usual annual funding of $15,000 covers quite a bit. It includes a small fee to each musician — usually about $20 for a concert if they also attended the week’s rehearsal, although more experienced members get more.
Band director Gary McCarty, who puts in about 10 to 12 hours a week on band matters, receives $180 a week. Funding also pays for new music and sometimes for new music stands. It also goes to a purchasing plan to buy large instruments that usually have to be borrowed from the local schools.
The band recently finished its summer season and members haven’t yet discussed what will happen if it loses its funding. Some cities, such as Lodi, Calif., have a “Friends of the Band” organization to support the band as a nonprofit group through memberships. Private sponsorship is another option, although not one that thrills McCarty.
“If we have to go to private funding, we’re no longer the municipal band, we’re someone or other’s band, and that’s a step backward about 150 years,” he said.
The Optimist Club also hasn’t yet talked about what to do if it loses funding for the fireworks show. It originally stepped forward when the Emporia Jaycees could no longer run the show for the city, but it never banked on having to financially support it.
“We do enough fundraising for enough other programs to help youth that I don’t see us spending our time to raise funds for a firework show,” said Bernie Toso, who oversees and fires off the fireworks show each year.
Without a doubt, the proposed cuts have been controversial. Supporters of programs like the band and the taxi coupons have started coming forward to voice their objections.
Zimmerman says that’s a good thing.
“If the community comes out in force and says this is something we really, really want ... it makes it easier for us to prioritize it,” he said.