Bend CC work meeting on cutting budget

bruce · Guest

(Also posted in BB2, and tomorrow a shorter article at Bend Weekly)

36 jobs cut or not filled.

Overtime cut by 22%/$417K.

Elimination of Code Enforcement proposed.

Building and Planning still sucking dollars, even with huge cuts. Clinton stated they should pay there own way--of course if this had been true three years ago we wouldn't be in such bad shape.

JR dead in water for now, leaving us $6M in hole, if land is not sold this fall. Everybody's got their fingers crossed that Garz can work some magic. (From Sonia) Madras has the prison work sewn up into the foreseeable future, so that's out for now.

Public Safety (fire/police) staffing levels being cut back to 05/06 levels. Fire is planning on closing Tumalo Station about 15% of time. Lots of talk about finding another $100K to keep it open. Finally decided to use half of Mirror Pond money to do so. Even with six stations, we still run out of ambulances at least part of the time two days out of three.

Street maintenance more than halved: $1.7M to $700K.

They finally recognize that commercial fees are too low, "they've been subsidized by residential", but no talk of increasing them. Only grumbling from Clinton that they should pay for themselves.

Question: When was the last time a developer paid his true SDC and fee costs in Bend?

Answer: Never. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

An aside: The new SDC structure is only increasing fees about 30%. COBA has had about 200 contacts with the City staff over increases in construction fees. Five of the seven councilors are directly involved with development and/or real estate in some way.

Back to "news": UGB will be delayed, and if someone sues over it the City may run out of lawyer money. Is this bad?

Accessibility, affordable housing take big hits. Transit not so much. Still, Capell talked about killing it.

Planning and Engineering both take huge hits, still far from paying for themselves.

Commercial permit fees for this fiscal year second highest in history--do they really expect this too last? Besides, they are still far from paying for themselves.

Increases? Community Development and Economic Development. Also $250K to airport debt service, $180K to Juniper Ridge debt service. They are trying to build out economic areas with debt in the hope of recouping the outlays...somehow. Not entirely clear. Sonia said "if they sell 50 acres at $5 a sq ft, great! Thats $10M, and I'm even." But then agreed that she didn't know where the $40M for the interchange was coming from, and stated that wasn't really her concern. It's more on Garzini and John Russell.

Her not-shovel ready price point seemed like she realized what it was really going to go for, if at all. I mentioned all the current commercial built and in process on the market and she glumly acknowledged it: "it's going to be tough". She really may be the sharpest tack in the bunch up at City Hall.

Also, reserves are being cut back to bare minimums, 1-2 months in many departments, and only two weeks in Transit. Scary.

Eric kept coming back to "structural problems". I think this is an allusion to the lack of realistic SDC's and fees, both in the past and present. I sketched a diagram that led from Low SDC's and Fees-->Planning, Engineering, Street, Utility deficits-->General Fund hits-->Public Safety Cuts. Until these folks man up and stand up to the RE/dev community, this place will always be in trouble, except for that once every generation bubble.

Sad. Especially when five of seven are directly involved with said industries. You can see it in their preference to cutting poor peoples' benefits (housing/transit/etc.) rather than cutting Economic and Community Development, rather than mandating realistic SDCs and permit fees.

The head (Mel?) of the Planning and Engineering Departments was stating that the subsidizing of commercial inspections by residential fees was killing us now, and Clinton was the only one who even stated that the developers should pay their own way in fee-based departments. Everyone else maybe thought that was a good idea, but action? Never.

That's all for now, back to taxes, etc.

PS Who ordered the effing snow today? On the good side, some Cali's may be thinking Tucson ;)

bendbb

bruce · Guest

Hmmm, that picture looks like it was taken more than a few years ago.

bottom feeder · Guest

City services in Bend face big cutbacks
By Peter Sachs / The Bulletin
Published: April 15. 2008 4:00AM PST

Broad budget cuts at the city of Bend could mean slower response times from fire trucks and ambulances, more small crimes going unsolved and fewer roads getting repaved.

The city is looking to cut about $12 million in expenses in the coming year, with reductions of 10 percent to 40 percent in nearly every city office.

“There’s no way that we can deal with a deficit of this size and not have an impact on service levels,” Interim City Manager Eric King told the City Council at a work session Monday night.

The budget cutbacks will be finalized in June. But in the next few weeks, 21 city employees will get pink slips. Thirteen of those will be in the Community Development Department, which includes planning, engineering and building.

The Fire Department could see its budget cut by 8 percent and the police budget could drop by 11 percent. In contrast, city officials proposed cuts of as much as 40 percent in some community development offices, and 21 percent for transit.

In December, the city announced layoffs of 10 people as it reeled from plunging development fees. The next month, the City Council shifted $1.5 million from the general fund to prop up the Community Development Department. In the current fiscal year, which ends June 30, the city has come up about $8 million short, with many departments relying on rainy-day funds to cover their costs.

“We are ending up dipping into (them) more than we feel comfortable with,” Finance Director Sonia Andrews said.

Cuts to police and fire departments

Concerned councilors looked for ways to boost public safety funding Monday night.

“As much as I think the transit is really important for a large population of the community, I think the people would be more upset if they didn’t have an ambulance come to pick them up than a Dial-A-Ride van,” Councilor Mark Capell said.

Facing the prospect of closing the Tumalo fire station about once a week, the council decided to shift $100,000 from another part of the general fund to keep all six fire stations open.

The Bend Fire Department staffs the Tumalo station but had started closing it occasionally to avoid calling up firefighters on overtime.

That still leaves the Fire Department down about $800,000 compared with what was budgeted for the coming fiscal year. That means no new hires, no new equipment and even some cuts in things like replacement gloves, helmets and hoses, Fire Chief Larry Langston said.

Both the police and fire departments will do away with vacant positions and won’t create any new ones.

That means a total of 24 fewer positions in the two departments and returns their staffing levels to what they were in 2006.

Interim Police Chief Sandi Baxter said those staffing reductions wouldn’t mean much change in response times for now, since officers responding to minor incidents could easily go to bigger emergencies instead.

But officers will have less free time to investigate crimes, she said.

“I do feel that the property crimes, those so-called quality-of-life crimes, we are going to lose our ability to respond properly and investigate those,” Baxter said.

She added that investigations of serious crimes like robberies, assaults and murders wouldn’t be hindered by the cutbacks.

More layoffs ahead

The largest number of layoffs will again come from the city’s Community Development Department.

Ten people will be laid off in the building division, which processes construction permits and does inspections, Community Development Director Mel Oberst said.

Not only will that mean longer waits for builders, but also, once the economy starts turning around, that department will continue to lag, Oberst said, because it can take more than a year to hire inspectors.

“It will be a slow recovery for us on turnaround times,” he said.

By the end of this fiscal year, the building department’s reserves will have dropped from $3.5 million to $500,000, Andrews said.

The city will do away with its code enforcement program, which was run through Community Development.

Instead, the police department may pick up some complaints about things like abandoned vehicles.

Other layoffs ahead include three in other parts of Community Development besides the building department, four in Public Works and four in city administration, bringing the total to 21.

Employees will receive notices around May 1, King said, and they will work through July.

Overall, the city will reduce its staff by 13 percent through attrition and layoffs.

“This isn’t hard and fast for the next year,” Capell said. He added, “We could conceivably be laying off more (in the fall) or we could conceivably be trying to rehire.”

Peter Sachs can be reached at 617-7837 or psachs@bendbulletin.com

confused bendite · Guest

hows about fixing the giant ruts at the s.e.x. roundabout . oh yeh the city was spending money on the landscape crew at that roundabout yesterday?

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