Wasting time at a community budget forum

This evening I attended the third of the four Community Budget Forums the city is holding to gauge community reaction to the budget deficit the city is facing and possibly, although not likely, to see if anyone could come up with some ideas on how to overcome that last $38.6 million that, right now, is standing between City Manager Mary Suhm and a balanced budget.

Ms Suhm her ownself conducted the meeting and did her usual superb job. The woman has far more patience with the nincompoops attending these meetings than she has for a lot of folks who work directly for her, but, then, I guess she correctly assumes she should expect more intelligence from those working directly for her.

Anyway, I found the entire exercise to be a a frustrating waste of time. If anything, this meeting gave Ms Suhm excellent direction on how to build the budget deficit back to the nearly $200 million she started with.

Here's the way the meeting works. First, Ms Suhm gives an overview of the "dire straits" and then has her folks distribute 10 green and 10 red adhesive dots to each person present with instructions to place the dots on poster boards around the room that list various services. They are to place the green dots on those they don't want reduced and red dots on those that they feel could be reduced or eliminated.

What a joke. The problem is the folks have absolutely no concepts of the ramifications of their choices. For example, as I strolled about the Jewish Community Center's Auditorium, I noticed one item that was full of red dots was multi-family inspection services. Those in attendance were all in favor of doing away with this. But when I asked people if they wanted to see their neighborhoods overrun with rundown slum apartment complexes, I was answered with "Of course not."

Following this exercise, the attendees seated at each table (and I'm guessing there were at least a dozen tables, probably more) were asked to come up with suggestions for preparing the upcoming budget. What everyone came up with was ways to spend money the city doesn't have, especially on libraries, the arts and health services, arguably the lowest priorities the city is facing right now (and I'll explain why later). I have a feeling the library's and the arts supporters rallied their folks to show up en masse to this meeting tonight, overwhelming those who really wanted to make some legitimate concrete suggestions.

My table didn't come up with too many suggestions because we had one person there who was convinced the solution to all the city's budgetary woes was eliminate the municipal court system. And she wasn't going to listen to anyone who even hinted at the fact that the courts were a revenue-generator, not an expense. When everyone else at the table decided the best way to show their protest was just to sit there in silence as though she didn't exist, she finally got up and left the meeting in somewhat of a rage. But by that time, we had precious seconds left to come up with concrete suggestions, of which I had a few that I will enumerate shortly.

The one thing the meeting did indicate to me, however, is just how out of touch city council members are with their constituents. I was told that at the southern Dallas meeting held June 3 at Cedar Crest Golf Course, that group nearly unanimously endorsed the concept of once-a-week-garbage pickup. Yet that concept has been vigorously opposed by the council members representing the southern sector.

And the two things I have heard time and time again from our council about this year's budget is that (1) the hiring of another 200 police officers is a given and (2) there absolutely will be no tax increase. Only one of the tables at last night's meeting labeled the hiring of the 200 police officers as a high priority, many more recommended the hiring be spread over several years (again demonstrating what a joke this exercise is -- the hiring of the 200 police officers for 2010-2011 will not really impact the budget until the following fiscal year) and some recommended suspended hiring any additional police officers until the city reaches the other end of the current recession. Not only that, many of them actually recommended an increase in the property tax rate and said so out loud. Our table had quite outspoken opposition to a tax rate increase by several members seated there; however, in a "secret" ballot held at the end of the discussions, the members at our table voted 4-3 in favor of a property rate hike.

(One table was even foolish enough to recommend a sales tax increase, as though the city could just impose one.)

The positive side to all this was that I counted four city council members at the meeting -- Jerry Allen of District 10, Linda Koop of District 11, Ron Natinsky of District 12 and just-inaugurated-earlier-that-day Ann Margolin of District 13. Maybe now they will think the 200 police hires and absolutely no property tax increases are not sacred cows. In addition I also spotted two of my favorite former city council members -- Veletta Lill and Lois Finkelman -- as well as former Mayor Adlene Harrison

Now, for my ideas on how to reduce the deficit. Most of them are severe, far more severe than the city has proposed and I know if someone who knows as much about the ins and outs of a city budget as Ms. Suhm were sitting next to me as I write these words, she would probably become quite exasperated over how impossible these ideas are. But that's never stopped me before, so here goes:

1. Reduce the workweek for city employees from 40 to 32 hours -- 8 hours a day, four days a week -- with an accompanying 20 percent reduction in pay for all salaried employees. The city is already recommending reducing rec center hours and library hours, so let's go ahead and reduce its own hours as well. I do not suggest that this would automatically trim 20 percent from the city's payroll, because, hopefully, it would also reduce the need to trim the city's workforce by the almost 1,000 employees now being talked about. I would imagine many of those about to be laid off would welcome the opportunity to work for 80 percent of their current salary than zero percent. But with 13,000-odd employees, it would make for some considerable savings.

2. Although those attending the Monday night's budget forum lobbied mightily for preserving health programs, especially dental and HIV screening programs, what they failed to realize is that, while important, those programs should not be the function of city government. They belong under the jurisdiction of county government. It's the county that maintains a Health Department, not the city. Hand over all -- I repeat, ALL -- health-related activities to the county.

3. Privatize, privatize, privatize. Privatize the library, privatize park maintenance, privatize the zoo, privatize Fair Park, privatize rec centers (individually if not collectively), privatize Bahama Beach. (I would argue for the privatization of Love Field, but the Aviation Department is self-supporting and, thus, not dependent on tax dollars, so there would be no savings there. Plus, I doubt there would be any takers for Dallas Executive Airport or Hemsley Field.) I want city government to do four things for me: provide me with (1)police/(2)fire protection; (3) make sure I have a clean, safe water supply; and (4) pick up my garbage. Everything else is up for discussion. I didn't include adequate street repair because I believe public transportation is far more important and city government here is not required to provide us with public transportation. And anyone who thinks it's more important for the city to provide an outlet for a starving artist than it is to protect the safety of its citizens is bonkers. Privatize it all. I was once the Public Information Officer for the city of Dallas and I knew then and I know now that all the functions of that office could be handled far more economically and far more efficiently with one good media consultant kept on retainer and then hire external PR agencies for the other functions on a project-by-project basis.

Yes, the above are drastic, and, politically speaking, probably impossible to institute. That's the problem with democracy -- politics often gets in the way of government efficiency, as Monday night's budget forum perfectly demonstrated. But I guarantee this--the above recommendations, if implemented, would solve the budget crisis,