So where was I? Oh yeah…

This blog has been resurrected, remodeled and renamed, at least temporarily, to take advantage of a rare opportunity.

How many times in the last few years have you anguished over government excess? And how many times were you able to do something about it? To rapidly effect real change?

Sadly, there’s little we can do about Washington or Austin. And due to our omnibus budgeting process, it’s usually impossible to limit Keller’s excesses, too.

The following letter to the editor of the Keller Citizen should appear in next week’s paper, to be followed the next week with a quarter-page ad displaying the same a week later:

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Frustrated with wasteful government spending?

Think there’s nothing you can do about it?

Think again!

A year ago the city council, facing declining revenue, nonetheless directed the city manager to lay off NO city staff under any circumstances. In the year since, the circumstances have only worsened.

Development in Keller has slowed dramatically (more than 50%) but the Community Development Department is still fully staffed.

Now the council is planning to issue new debt to cover its budget shortfall. It will cost taxpayers an additional $2.7 million. Council members have flatly refused repeated pleas to even consider budget cuts instead.

We now have a rare opportunity to take a firm stand against wasteful spending. We can overturn the council’s decision and take away their credit card by filing a petition of referendum. We need only about 500 signatures, but we firmly believe we can get many more.

If you’d like to help in this effort, with time or money, please contact us. Signatures will need to be gathered April 7th through May 5th. Read more at www.kellercitylimits.com or beyondrightfield.wordpress.com.

Jim Carson, Keller City Councilman 2006-2008
jim@kellercitylimits.com
817.874.7755

Doug Miller, Planning and Zoning Commissioner
doug@kellercitylimits.com
214.215.0870

Like pigs lining up at the trough, the City of Dallas is formulating a plan to ask for money in the next stimulus bill. 

My question to you, will Keller get in line or take a pass?

 

From the City’s website:

This coming Tuesday, the Council will be voting on the fiscal year 2008-09 budget. Working with our City Manager and his staff, the Council was able to hold the tax rate to its current level while maintaining, and in many instances improving, our level of service to the community. Some highlights of the budget include support of the new Fire Station No. 4 construction, associated staffing for the new station, a new fire truck and two ambulances (one for the new station and one replacement), all of which will reduce response times and enhance the provision of emergency services. Further, we have incorporated funding for drainage improvements, street improvements and new water lines. The library renovation and expansion project remains a priority as we look forward to breaking ground this spring. Employee salary and benefits continue to be in line with the market as we seek to minimize turnover and maintain our most valuable resource. Overall, the budget is a structurally balanced financial document that is conservatively based in response to our current economic conditions.

From tonight’s agenda:

Consider a resolution to consider a proposal to adopt a tax rate that will exceed the lower of the rollback rate or the effective tax rate; calling two (2) public hearings to be held at 7:00 P.M., on September 2, 2008 and September 9, 2008, at Keller Town Hall, 1100 Bear Creek Parkway, Keller, Texas; requiring publication of a Notice of Public Hearing in accordance with §26.06 of the Texas Tax Code; requiring a record vote; and providing an effective date.

Here is where it gets tricky. The Tax RATE ($0.43219) will remain the same, but because of the way the state calculates property taxes, the real rate increase is 9.7%. That’s because the taxable value of property in the city increased by that percentage from both new construction and increased valuations.

From memory, the rollback rate is 8%.

Why is the rollback rate so important? Because if the citizens pass a petition, they can call for a rollback election to force the tax rate lower. It’s a dangerous proposition to raise the rate above 8% (ask Bedford how it turned out for them).

On another note, I’ve been living in Keller since 1999, and don’t remember the City raising taxes above the rollback rate. Somebody with a better memory can correct me if I’m wrong.

The proposed budget has been posted on the City’s website.

You can peruse it here

UPDATE (12Jul08): The Keller Citizen updated its letters to the editor section (after many months of no updates) late on July 11, 2008, after I posted my original comment below. I’m looking forward to seeing the latest letters appearing online each week when the hardcopy version hits our mailboxes.

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Jim Carson’s letter in the 11 July 2008 Keller Citizen reminds us of the voice for open and transparent government we have lost. When the Keller Citizen sees fit to post letters from July 2008 online I’ll link to it. All I can find is letters from Nov 2007 and April 2008 telling us how good it would be if Jim was no longer on the City Council.

Hope you like your ‘change’ and ‘hope we can believe in.’

A recent article appeared in the Star-Telegram regarding KISD’s legal fees:

Penny Benz, assistant superintendent of human resources, said the district’s law firm has been excellent, but school officials want to explore hiring a full-time employee who is a lawyer.

It would cost an estimated $150,000 for salary, benefits and an initial department budget, Benz said.

The district budgets more than $200,000 a year for legal services.

This article reminded me of an unanswered question of mine. Last Summer, I requested that the city manager put a new exhibit in the annual budget, detailing prior years’ legal costs and current-year expectations. Not only did my request go unfulfilled, but nowhere in our 350-page budget document can I deduce, infer, or even guess how much we pay in attorney’s fees.

So anyway, one day after asking our new city manager about these costs, I have the answer: The City of Keller paid $410,000 in legal fees last year.

The first question that comes to mind might be: “Why does the school district, with ten times as many employees and a budget three times as large, have legal costs that are less than half of the City of Keller’s?” Good question.

Part of the answer is that Keller has to pay for a prosecutor in its municipal court. This amounts to about $62,000. Another reason might be that Keller wrapped up two lawsuits in fiscal year 2007.

But I think another part of the answer has been an attitude of “us vs. them.” In several past instances when the city was accused of mis-, mal- or non-feasance, the city staff immediately adopted an adversarial stance, often without even consulting the city council. For instance, some of our older sewer pipes have failed, causing raw sewage to back up into people’s homes. I think the moral response to such an event is for the city to pay for the damage it caused, not “lawyering up.”*

Here’s a link to an Excel spreadsheet with the detailed costs: Attorney Fees.xls

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* I fully understand that I’m asking innocent taxpayers to pay for the mistakes of the government, and I also fully understand sovereign immunity and its benefits and shortcomings. What most troubles me is that the people’s representatives were often not even consulted before sovereign immunity was applied.

Tuesday night the Keller City Council held a budget workshop. The two dominant topics were funding for the Arts and the city’s personnel costs.

Since the election in May, city council members chose to make a policy decision regarding the funding of the Public Arts Board. In the past, the PAB had been funded by dedicated revenue from the leases on cell towers and a contractual annual “donation” of $25,000 from the city’s garbage vendor. The effect of these dedicated revenue streams was to keep the arts funding “off limits” from all other competing spending priorities. In effect, the PAB had its own savings account, although it couldn’t make withdrawals without being in an approved budget. The new city council ended this dedicated revenue practice and insisted that the PAB be funded from the General Fund, where it competes directly with other city needs.

The Chairman of the Public Arts Board made one last plea for some type of dedicated funding. His most persuasive point for dedicated funding was that it shows council commitment to the Arts which would help secure grant and cosponsor money. The council politely denied the request.

The second, and much more important, topic concerned city staff pay increases. In our budget workshop this summer, I objected to budgeted increase in salaries as too high. So I took the budget worksheets for this year and last to examine costs in more detail.

What alarmed me the most was that, despite the council being told last year that raises were about 7%, actual raises were about 10.5%. (I voted against last year’s budget because I thought 7% was too high.)

This year’s budgeted raises were a 3.5% cost-of-living raise for everyone, plus an additional 3.5 – 6% merit/step raise for most employees. Rather than rant, rave and blog about this, I decided to just print the conclusions of my analysis for my fellow council members and offer the following compromise:

Instead of giving both cost-of-living and merit/step raises, employees would receive whichever is greater.

I did not suggest the council eliminate cost-of-living raises, as Adrienne Nettles said in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. I suggested eliminating cost-of-living raises for those people already receiving a 3.5-6% merit/step raise. My proposal would have reduced the average raise from 7.5% down to about 4.3%.

When we asked the staff how many employees qualified for their merit/step raises, we were told “all but one.”

We recently did an employee survey in conjunction with our search for a new city manager. The answer came back that they loved (former city manager) Lyle Dresher and feared the city council. With his ability to sneak a three-times-market wage increase past the city council last year, and getting them a double-market increase three months after he quit, I can see why they love him.

http://www.star-telegram.com/407/story/233630.html

The proposed FY2007/2008 is online at the city’s website.

The city council’s budget workshop is Saturday, August 18th, 8:30am, and the public is invited.

Today we had our annual City Council Goals Retreat. ‘Retreat’ is a bit of an exaggeration—we retreated all the way to the community room in the Police facility. It’s a day-long session where the council and department heads hash out the goals for next year, from which the budget is developed.

The day started with my rather vicious attack on Interim City Manager Kevin Lahner, followed by some contentious dialogue about bygones, and then some kindergarten-level discussion about desirable words regarding communication. The moderator of all this was Mike Conduff of the Elim Group, who did an admirable job of defusing tensions early, managing our time when needed, and staying out of the way when we were being productive all by ourselves. Mike exceeded my expectations, but the real credit goes to Kevin Lahner and Pat McGrail for having the foresight to hire him. His presence as a neutral party enabled some rather speedy trust-building.

So we agreed on some ground rules for today and for ever, including McGrail’s “Don’t shoot the messenger” and Holmes’ “Don’t feel shot.”

We talked about so many things I couldn’t possibly remember them all, but here’s a few:

We reconfirmed our desire to get a library improvement option on this November’s ballot. There will also be at least one Town Hall meeting to discuss the library. One concern mentioned was that not enough people show up to Town Hall meetings; even the most controversial issue of the last decade, the Town Center Library, only attracted a couple of hundred people to the two Town Hall meetings in 2005. I suggested that we announce a Town Hall meeting to discuss a $50 million library, but everyone thought I was kidding. Heck, we could have sold tickets to that.

We talked about taxes and debt. Last year the council adopted a lower tax rate, the so-called “effective tax rate,” that was about a penny less than the prior year. With Keller’s continued growth in taxable values on existing property, the effective tax rate will almost certainly be lower again this year. While the council toyed with the idea of trying to once again adopt the lower effective tax rate, we tentatively agreed that all the additional firefighters we’re going to need will probably make that impossible. Of course, there was no appetite for an increased tax rate—anyone who expressed such an idea would have “felt shot.”

I begged for, and finally received, permission to read the draft version of a certain report. I was made to swear that I would not blog on how the sausages were made, at least not while they’re being made.

We were brutally unfair to Dona Roth Kinney, Parks & Recreation Director. We dangled $48 million in front of her, and then schemed how we would take it away from her. Actually, we discussed the incredibly speculative business of gas well revenue that will be gleaned from a thousand feet below the Parks At Town Center. There is much, much more to be discussed about this.

As usual, I debated the merits of the Keller Crime Control and Prevention District with Police Chief Mark Hafner. As usual, I lost. There will be a renewal of the Street Maintenance Sales Tax on the ballot in November. The city attorney is investigating whether we can rebalance street funding and KCCPD funding on that ballot measure. Stay tuned.

We discussed economic development. I monologued how proactive economic development necessarily violated the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. I think I quoted both George Washington and Che Guevara. They patted me on the head and moved on.

There will likely be a resolution on a City Council agenda in the near future establishing a perk for City Council members—an annual membership at the Keller Pointe. I’ll certainly vote for it, even though I don’t expect to use the Pointe. I’ve long felt that City Council members should be compensated for their time. One bad council decision could cost the taxpayers millions, so why would we want to dissuade otherwise excellent candidates because they couldn’t afford to give up the time? If the Pointe perk is passed, councilmen will get a $500 fringe benefit for their 500+ hours of annual service.

At the end of the meeting, Mayor McGrail pointed to one of Mike’s metrics that had been posted at the beginning—What must happen for me to walk away happy? I replied that I only needed to walk away, that I was as happy as ever as a result of this meeting.

One soberly realizes that one has a reputation for withering criticism when one declares his happiness and the entire room erupts in applause. OK, I deserve that. This post is an answer to Mitch’s special request that I acknowledge, for a change, when things go well. Gladly.

In last Tuesday’s pre-council meeting, we discussed the idea of paying Freese & Nichols $120,000 to create a Master Plan for Old Town Keller and the commercial corridor along US-377 on the North end of town.

First let me draw a distinction between private master plans and government master plans.

An excellent example of a private master plan is Keller’s own Hidden Lakes community. Hidden Lakes is the result of Hanover Properties’ careful planning of land it actually owned and/or other land owned by people who voluntarily agreed with the plan. Hidden Lakes is a success story—1,700 or so homeowners who voluntarily bought into the plan.

Government master plans, on the other hand, dictate how other people’s property is used. If these other people don’t like the choice the government has made for them, well, that’s just tough. Or, as Mr. Trine put it, “at that point they can come back and ask for a change and justify it.”

Freedom and government are opposites. Every expansion of government entails a reduction of freedom. The more detailed we make our plans for other people’s property, the fewer options they are left with. My fellow councilmen apparently see land use as a “highest and best use” issue—We will not stop at deciding what is permissible—we will decide what is best. But surely they forget the dark side of their well-meaning plans: when a landowner has a different view of the highest and best use of his land, he’ll find himself in jail if he tries to act on it.

Why not trust people to act in their own interest? Let’s have some simple zoning and development codes that seek only to prevent someone from building something that harms his neighbor, or harms his neighbor’s property value. The free market works. I don’t know the proper mix of businesses in North Keller, and neither does Lyle Dresher or Freese & Nichols. But the people who are willing to invest millions of dollars of their own money have a pretty good idea.

Finally, I’ll close with a quote from City Manager Lyle Dresher, introducing the discussion of the Old Town Master Plan. You can make of it what you will:

…it’s just to develop an overall master concept plan of what we would like to see that look like, very much like what we did in Town Center.

Video of Old Town Master Plan discussion

Anaheim, CA city council lets the free market decide

While using Whitley today on my trip to the cleaners I found it flooded out again. This was my new route to get around the Pate Orr construction.  After my drop off and pick up I drove down to the barricade on Pate Orr to see if anything new had happened.  It looks like they almost have all the corrugated pipe in, all they need to do is cover it up before it floats off and resurface the road.  I don’t think this is going to happen by the new Feb. 1 deadline.

The city said they were going after the property owner that they claim is causing the flooding on Whitley.  That must not of worked because Whitley is still flooding whenever a cloud floats by. On Pate Orr we are four months into a project that really amounts to no more than digging a hole and throwing in a cheap corrugated pipe.  Just like farmers have done for 100 years.  Only they usually only took a day or two to accomplish their projects.  Did the city get a performance clause in their contract when they let whoever they hired build this ditch? 

After the first Rufe Snow fiasco and now Whitley and Pate Orr I can’t wait to see how long the next Rufe Snow project takes.  Oh, I forgot about the bridge on Keller-Smithfield.  Keller should take a look at the state and see if they could match their performance on the widening of 1709 from Keller to Hwy 114. 

Most of this rant is tongue in cheek, but seriously the city has a poor track record with street projects and even though I think Rufe Snow should have been widened years ago, I am dreading this project based on what has and is happening. There is a lot of room for improvement and accountability.