Time Machine: 2009 City Election

I was going through old files on my computer and I found the questions from the 2009 election's candidate's forum. The last question at the forum was this:

Please address issues such as the level of funding for police protection, library and other services.

1.      Where do you see our sources of revenue coming from in the future?

(2 minutes)

The two minutes refers to the amount of time we had to answer. In order to stay in the time limit here is what I outlined for my answer:

We finished the 2009 fiscal year on June 30th with a $39K deficit. We had carryover so that we were able to meet our obligations, but the administrative plan for U-H recommends carrying a cash reserve equal to 30%  of the budget. For last year that would have been roughly $210K.

Currently public safety accounts for half our budget. Budgeted amount is nearly $350K. Fire Protection is roughly $30K and Coralville's assessment to us hasn't risen since the early 1990's. In the past five years police returns on average about 15% of their budget. 

 We passed the library levy in 2005. Last year we generated nearly $12,000 from our levy. Next year our assessment to IC and Coralville libraries will total $30K. The remaining $18K will have to come from the general fund. 

We can probably get by for the next four years due to our Local Option Sales Tax (LOST) money, which so far has averaged nearly $10K per month. This is where I need to go back to my vision for U-H: “A financially sustainable community that maintains its high quality of life.” After 2013 we lose the sales tax money. We cannot at that time just raise property taxes because we already tax at the maximum rate. There are a few specific levies we may be able to add that would shift expenses from the general fund, but these do not amount to a great deal of money. We will at that point need to face cutting services. Having less community protection, garbage services or library access would reduce our quality of life. 

To be foresighted and explore options for additional revenue through smart development including a commercial area, makes sense, but we need to do it before we already have a revenue shortfall on our hands.

Nothing that has happened in the last two years contradicts these statements. We have continued to collect LOST money, and our balance at the end of fiscal years 2010 and 2011 have been smaller than the amount of LOST revenue we have received. The council elected in 2011 will have to make plans to come up with more revenue, or cut services.