Bond issues
The focus we keep hearing about from City Council is all about which projects will be funded and will everything make the wish list. In reality there will always be politics around which projects do or do not make the list and we will always have more projects than money. The money however is always going to be coming from the taxpayer and what has been proposed doesn’t solve the problem.
The infrastructure committee has come up with the “Pay-as-you-go” model for funding new projects. This model sounds good, and who would argue with not spending more than you will have. The problem here is that we may have the money on paper, but we won’t have it in reality.
Some of the money that is part of “Pay-as-you-go” actually sits in the city’s general fund to the tune of $6.8 Million for roads and buildings according the committee reports for 2007. Although the money is ‘designated’ for roads and buildings, that money can and has historically been diverted to pay for other things. That’s how we got here in the first place and nothing that is being proposed changes that.
In addition as councilwoman Jeanne Faatz has pointed out, if we increase the bonding capacity to address the current backlog we will still be short of money. The ballot measure to increase taxes to pay for maintenance and ‘bridge the gap’ is not enough to cover the cost of the additional projects.
That means we would fail “Pay-as-you-go” right out of the gates and put us back in the hole which means we haven’t solved the problem. To truly solve to problem, money that is designated for capital maintenance has to be set in a special fund that ensures the money will be used as it is intended and until that is done for ALL the money that supports these capital projects, we should not be increasing our taxes. Why did a bigger hole?
This letter has not been edited.