Here is another blog post from Donna Schmitt re: the goings on at the Columbia Heights City Council meetings. She is running for City Council and has definitely put in her dues to get there this fall. And we would all benefit greatly for her responsible and level headed approach. I hope this will continue to be a regular posting here at District 50A blog. She can use your help in more ways then one. E-mail here and volunteer, thank you in advance.
Donna Schmitt, is running for City Council in Columbia Heights, MN. If you want someone who will watch our backs, I don't think you could find anyone better. Go to her blog for more info on her.
Apparently some of the city staff did not appreciate my letter to the
editor in the Sun Focus on July 29, 2010. They sent me a letter and
copy of an in-house memo trying to say that I wasn't giving out the
whole "truth of the interest expense."
Here is part of my response:
On complaint from the city of my rounding up $961,392 and saying that it was 'almost a million""
On page 19 of the 2009 report it listed interest on long-term debt
for 2009 at $961,392. Anything over $950,000 is almost a million in my
eyes and many other people. I have sat through many city council
meetings where numbers are rounded up or down by the presenter. This is
an accepted practice. Of course, this is not an accepted practice if
you are the accountant.
On the city's response being that property taxes only raised about $17 per person:
To say that this only resulted in a $17 per person increase is
another interesting perspective. The 2000 census data from the city’s
website show that we have 18,520 residents. Multiply 18,520 X $17 =
$314,840. Yet your letter stated that the figure was actually $314,000,
which means you are also rounding a per cost estimate. The other part
of that $17 that isn’t being presented is that of the 18,520 people that
live in this city, not all of them are paying property tax. I do not
know of any household in the city where their city portion of their property taxes only went up $17 or even just $16.96.
On the comment in the memo that the citizens could have petitioned to stop the building of the public safety building:
The point is not that these projects were ‘bad’ ideas. I don’t know
of many people that would deny that we needed more space for the police
and fire. Though I have heard over and over from citizens in reference
to the new building, yes, we needed it, but we didn't need a Taj Mahol.
The point is that we cannot sustain this rate of increase of spending
into the future. I think that was made very clear in my article. What
my article did not say, for lack of space, was that a new city hall, a
new public library, walking paths in our parks are all wonderful things
but at this time we cannot continue borrowing money at this rate and
especially borrowing money to meet our basic needs. There will have to
be more cuts.
On the city's claim that 55% of the long-term interest and debt is paid for funding received from other jurisdictions:
Your point that “55% of the principal and interest on long-term debt
for tax increment projects is paid with funding received from other
jurisdictions” is a good point. But I also look at that in this
perspective: If your son or daughter took out a loan for $10,000 to buy
a used car and you, as their parent, co-signed, you are ultimately
responsible for that loan. The City of Columbia Heights is kind of like
that. We have been promised all of this money for projects from
outside sources. But we cosigned that loan and if those outside sources
default on their portion of the loan we are ultimately responsible for
the full amount.
The second part of that is all those other jurisdictions are just
another tax that has been paid in another way to our county, state and
federal government. So we are still paying.
As a city we could go bankrupt. Even if we don’t, if a city around
us goes bankrupt it will destroy the reputation of the surrounding area,
ultimately hurting our credit rating. That is a very real possibility,
whether it is Hilltop or Minneapolis that defaults on their loans, we
would be effected.
Concerned about spending:
Am I concerned about spending? Yes! Can we continue to see the same
rate of increase of borrowed money over the next four years? No! The
next four years are not going to be fun years with lots of fun projects
coming forward. If we can just maintain city services without going
into bankruptcy we will be accomplishing a lot. When things start to
look up, that is when we can look at adding new projects, but not now.
Now is when we need to pay our bills and get back to a common sense
budget.
