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Co. Springs budget woes lead to cuts
A park restroom closed due to budget restrictions in Colorado Springs, Colo.
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Colorado Springs city workers disable street lamps.
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Kai Ryssdal: Even as he gets ready to name that commission on the budget deficit, President Obama was celebrating the first anniversary of his economic stimulus program today. But right on the heels of telling us how many jobs have been saved or created, the president was warning about layoffs to come -- as stimulus money that states are getting runs out.
Layoffs are already the reality in Colorado Springs, Colo. The state constitution there makes it pretty hard to raise taxes, so instead, city officials have found some attention-getting ways to cut spending. From Colorado Public Radio, Zachary Barr has more.
Zachary Barr: Renee Bergen fixes streetlamps for a living. So for her, the irony of today's job is clear.
RENEE BERGEN: It's opposite of what I usually do. Usually I'm supposed to keep the lights on, you know.
Bergen climbs aboard a white bucket truck and is hoisted up into the air. She's set to disable a working streetlight.
BERGEN: We will swap out the sensor, and put orange marker tape.
The orange tape signifies the light's turned off and over the next few months, crews will repeat this task 10,000 times. City officials believe the savings will total over a million dollars a year. But that's not enough to plug a $28 million funding gap. So other cuts include night and weekend bus service, and a police helicopter unit. Additionally, the city now has 15 percent fewer employees than two years ago.
That's according to City Manager Penny Culbreth-Graft.
Penny Culbreth-Graft: We have a significant long-term financial issue that is basically a product of our desire to keep services going without a revenue stream to pay for those services.
That revenue stream is taxes. And taxes in Colorado Springs are a lot smaller than in other cities its size. The city's 400,000 residents are politically conservative with a well-known anti-tax streak, and they've got a powerful state law on their side. Colorado's taxpayer's bill of rights means...
JAN MARTIN: Municipalities do not have the ability to raise taxes without the vote of the people.
Jan Martin's on city council. She introduced a large property tax hike on last November's ballot. It was specifically designed to offset the funding gap. Residents overwhelmingly rejected the tax increase.
Businessman Chuck Fowler was one of those anti-tax voters.
CHUCK FOWLER: Governments have a tendency to grow and get big and take on things that many believe they shouldn't be taking on. And that's the case here and that's the case everywhere.
Fowler heads a business group critical of how the city's handling its budget. He believes city officials are ignoring the obvious.
FOWLER: They're going for the things that are easy to cut rather than the things that are hard to cut. And the things that are hard to cut deal with human beings and personnel.
Fowler says the city needs to look much harder at pay-cuts and lay-offs. But city officials have decided that its employees shouldn't take pay cuts just because residents want to keep taxes low. So instead, Parks and Recreation took a big hit. That department's budget was recently slashed by 75 percent.
In more than 100 city parks, you'll no longer see a trash can. The grass may go brown because there's no money to water. Bathrooms are locked shut and pools and rec centers are set to be closed.
Dean Hightower and his dog are regular visitors to the city's largest park.
DEAN HIGHTOWER: There's a lot of people in Colorado Springs who really rely on being able to come to the park and have a good time, but the budget shortfall that we've got right now is just killing everybody. I mean, look at our roads.
Speaking of roads, the city's cut its paving unit to zero for budgetary reasons.
In Colorado Springs, I'm Zachary Barr for Marketplace.
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Ultimately, the folks in Colorado Springs (estimated population of 308K+) have to decide what is more important, their money or their time.
If it is their money, then they ought to be doing what their doing and deny tax increases.
But they also need to examine the level of City Services that they expect and the level of expertise, professionalism, that they want in their city workers (both Politicians and Civil Servants). If they want to maintain the status quo, denying additional taxes is fine but in so doing they had better be ready to roll up their sleeves and pitch in. Literally. They need to be ready to require ALL residents to put in X amount of hours per month at tasks that they may not relish. This should not be something that is 'dumped on' prisoners in a City or County Jail. Residents, both young and old, rich and poor, need to 'step up' and answer the Call of Civic Duty.
Residents could be responsible for:
-Staffing the Public Libraries.
-Staffing and maintaining the Parks and Recreational areas and cleaning the Rest Rooms in those parks.
-Cleaning the streets.
Personally, I'd rather not enforce criminal laws or charge into burning buildings so I would advise against their reducing the Police and Fire budgets ... but hey, it's their call. While adhering to all State and Local laws, if they want to respond to a 911 call that there is some drunken idiot with a gun threatening his wife, or run up the stairs in a burning building, or scrape up the body of someone on a street, step right up.
-Work in City Hall doing clerical work.
If they think that they can do these and other tasks efficiently then they need to 'Step Up': They need to put their desire to maintain the current level of funding for city services where their mouth (and ballot) is.
As a resident of Colorado Springs I can say, with pride and enthusiasm, that I voted for the tax increase proposed by Jan Martin. It upsets me to see some of the comments written in this blog, such as - "And if it fails, well, we'll just have another broken-down Detroit-style town around to clean up."
Really? Thank you Greg from Durham, NC. Your recommendations for my hometown are cold-hearted and unwelcome. It is unfortunate that more than half of the residents of this city are unwilling to bend on the proposed tax increases, and the city and its residents are suffering as a result. Our city is falling apart because people who live here are ultimately cheap and short-sighted, and were unwilling to pay a minuscule increase to sustain our roads, Police, Fire Department, parks & rec., streetlights, and the Pioneers Museum amongst other services. It is infinitely frustrating to see the people of this city vote against their own best interests. I can assure you, as a low income earner myself, that I would rather pay a few extra dollars a week to make this city better than have to relocate just to sustain my current standard of living.
Our whole country needs to cut back on it's over-spending addiction. Kudos to the citizens of the 'Springs for putting their foot down on spending and shame on the leaders for blowing money on propaganda and unsustainable staff.
It's easily apparent that you already have corrupt officials who are unwilling to work with a known and sane budget limitation. Instead of proposing a new tax to the people, go get some community input on what the majority of people want and get a compromise about what people are willing to pay and pay for to keep the town running through the downturn. Put temporary salary reductions as one of your first revenue sources.
Governments are full of people who want to run economies without actually following the laws of economics. It's time to earn their pay, rather than flushing it down the drain.
Isn't Colorado Springs the headquarters of Focus on the Family? I guess some people just focus on his/her own family and don't care a bit for the families of those city workers whose salary or jobs they want to cut.(City workers pay taxes too, btw). And of course, if your job gets cut, you don't deserve health insurance or access to any social welfare programs because if you aren't working you must just be lazy, right? I find it so horrible how willing some Americans seem to be to pass economic pain to other Americans without even a second thought.
The reality of the private sector that never makes it to the public sector is you always have to strive for more productivity. That means you need fewer workers to offer the SAME services, not slash the services that you offer and keep the same worker base. I'd hope Colorado Springs residents would see these actions for the blackmail they are and change the politicians for people who will work on productivity first.
Let's imagine, for a moment, that we can achieve the necessary cost savings by cutting civil service salaries by 20% and eliminating benefits. That would be short of the gap, btw, but bear with me. Cops in Mexico and India make less than that and it seems to work fine there. Well, except for the kidnapping and torture for money. The fastest way to paralyzing corruption is to pay your civil servants less than a professional wage.
As a resident of Colorado Springs, I can say proudly that I voted in favor of MORE taxes. I grew up here and would gladly contribute part of my hard earned dollars to financially support my hometown. I would even go so far as to suggest that my tax dollars paid to my community will give me a greater direct benefit than taxes paid to the US government. It now saddens me to drive down Academy Blvd, the main north-south thoroughfare, as every time I hit another new pothole, I want to move away from my hometown. No matter what my feelings about the Springs may be, it is true the residents of this town voted overwhelmingly against my point of view. That is democracy at work, and I must respect this. But, I also think it is fair to say that having the lowest tax-rate for a city of our size will not positively effect residential or commercial growth if the city is so poorly maintained that current and future residents and business owners leave, or never move here in the first place. I would also consider it fair to say that services as they are now, even reduced from previous years, are dependent on a strong growth rate, as this provides job creation and gross tax revenue increases for the city. The stalling of this growth rate was a major factor of the budget shortfall that forced the city to ask to ask for more taxes, and cut services when the residents told them no. There is a negative feedback loop being created with this cycle; one which my fellow residents seem to be disbelieving of, or are simply ignorant of.
It also frustrates me to read suggestions from out of state bystanders suggesting that someone "organize" services to replace those cut by the city. The coordinated efforts of a group of people who pool resources to create a better city and life for its residents is called "Government", as in "By the people, of the people and for the people".
Im wondering if when someone your interviewing on your show says "of course we can cut down on government spending" do you then say what government services do you want to cut? I could go on and on but that is the essence of my question.
marv quick 510 525 8360
Its called BlackMail! They do it in California too. Instead of cutting the 500,000/year retirement of some 'City Controller', they cut bus services, -without laying off any drivers, of course.
The USA has a long way to go... down... before the pain is severe enough to make people wiser rather than slimy :)
"Bottom line: if you want the services, pay the taxes."
Who says that people want (or more importantly, NEED) all the services? When a company gets into trouble, there's all kinds of cost-cutting measures put into place. It's sad to think that .gov would get a free pass here.
If something's important, organize ponying up the cash -without- being taxed. Or organize to get the referendums passed on election day. Or maybe, despite the handwringing, it's just not that important to people to have a perfectly manicured park. It's a worthy experiment. And if it fails, well, we'll just have another broken-down Detroit-style town around to clean up.
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