LETTER: City can fight mosquitoes without raising taxes

By LaVonne Hansen
Hutchinson

I don’t tend to operate by writing letters. I like to understand a situation and work with the people to find a better solution. But the Hutchinson mosquito spraying proposal didn’t make sense so I spent 30 minutes reviewing the city budget process and I went from being confused to being utterly “frustrated.” (That is being really tactful about how I actually felt.)
I am going to write two letters on this. The first specifically addresses the mosquito program. The second will be about things to improve the planning and budgeting process as a whole.

First, if one of my managers came to me with an $11.2 million budget, asked for a 4.2 percent increase in his budget and on top of that said he needed $45,000 more — he would be laughed out of the review room — but more likely I would find a new manager.

Did you ever notice that when a high school wants more money, school officials threaten to cut popular sports programs or key classes? They never bring up the less popular stuff. Well, this mosquito program was similar — a way to get more tax money than the state allowed.

The state limits how much a city can raise its taxes. This encourages cities to manage their expenses professionally and not just go raising taxes every time there is a shortfall. This year the allowed increase was 3.3 percent plus there is an extra allowance for high inflation items such as utilities and fuel. The total allowed tax increase comes in at about 4.2 percent.
After the budget was reworked for 2009, the city showed a shortfall of $600,000 (but there is so much opportunity in this amount — see the next letter.) The mosquito program was cherry picked out of the budget up front — before the departments were asked to reduce expenses. It was known the public would react and it would be a way to get extra tax increases and beat the state limit. You can increase taxes if voters approve it.

Let me offer the following ways to pay for the mosquito program without raising taxes.

1. The city will be $90,000 under budget this year, 2008. Put in an accrual and prepay for the spraying program out of the excess money from this year. You should be able to negotiate a lower price by paying in advance.
2. Do what should have been done in the first place. Go back to the city departments and ask that they find the 0.5 percent in the current expenses. Hutchinson is lucky to have some talented staff and this is such a small amount — give them the challenge and I am sure they will rise to the occasion.
3. Give the citizens the chance to pick what they would like to cut from the budget. What else could we have given up? Maybe we plant a few less trees or cut back on some lower priority expenses — but you gave us no choice in the process. With the economic conditions today, we have budget problems, too.
4. If the city reduced the expenses for the liquor store and water/ sewer, the net revenue should go up — but the budget shows it flat. This would more than pay for the program. If the city didn’t apply the reductions to these departments, why not?
5. Give the budget to me and in two hours I will find it.

If this is how we handle a small shortfall, what is going to happen when times get really tough?

There were no surprises in this budget cycle. The potential $200,000 shortfall from the state was the same as last year. The escalation factors for salaries and so on were similar and special provisions were made for the fuel and utilities. The City Council could really use some hands-on, real-life business experience.