All posts in the topic Was HRA 2009, now more Generalized Roseville 2009 Budget (Short link)
Summary
- There are 2 posts — by 2 authors — in this topic.
- Latest post made by John Kysylyczyn at Nov 26 03:27 UTC
First, a simple reminder that one of the rules for the e-Democracy forum is that users need to register with their full name. No standing back "anonymously" throwing rocks here. The topic seems to have begun with the "quatement" (half question/half statement) of suspending the HRA levy for a year and has taken a turn toward the more general topic of the Roseville Budget. As best I can tell, the proposed 2009 budget information can be found on the Roseville Finance Documents Center<http://www.ci.roseville.mn.us/DocumentCenterii.asp?FID=3> Under the section for "Finance" Specifically, I think the link to the high-level budget is here: http://www.ci.roseville.mn.us/DocumentView.asp?DID=2230 I wish that I personally had more time to read and form my own opinion about the difficult decisions that must be made at the community level. I wish the same in my own life, I wish that I could do a better job of managing our household budget. Knowing this, saying "yes" to one expenditure and "no" to others is bound to upset the constituency on one side or the other, I know it does at our house. When things are going along swimmingly, it's a little easier to say "yes" on the expectation that revenue will increase and things will come together to enable making ends meet. Many people I know are in the position of "do more with less." It seems unfair to expect someone else to do what it is we are not willing to do ourselves. There are some tough decisions that need to be made. This is the time when our leaders truly need to "lead."
Good comments Ken. The last time I had a rock thrown at me like that, it came
from senior staff at the fire department who were running a political campaign
website from city computers during the work day.
The proposed 2009 budget information you are referring to and provided the
links to is NOT the proposed budget. What you found is essentially 20 some
pages of what is primarily a power point propaganda presentation. The
"high-level" budget is actually a very basic summary sheet with little useful
detail.
The information you found is propaganda designed to convince us that we have
the lowest taxes on earth and should support whatever tax increase is being
proposed from the administration. The message is that taxes are low, so it is
none of your business where we are spending the money. Too bad that the city's
numbers don't match up with what the non-partisan Citizens League puts out or
what our State Auditor puts out, but that's another story.
It is important to note that they recycle that presentation year after year,
going back until at least 1998 when I attended my first council budget
hearings. Some of the other pages are extremely generalized numbers that tell
you absolutely nothing about where the money is going. The only major change
is that when Chris Miller took over as finance director from Ed Burrell in
2001, the slide stating that Roseville has some of the HIGHEST user fees was
mysteriously deleted.
City Manager Bill Malinen said at last night's city council meeting that
everything the council was given was placed on the internet. Sorry Bill, but I
know that is not true, and Council Member Ihlan spilled the beans when she
asked about the line item budget book in response to your comment. The council
got a line item budget packet that is about one inch thick that tells you where
the money actually goes in the detail required to make competent decisions. It
states how much money is spent in a department for conferences, or about how
much money they want to spend on buying employees coffee and donuts. It
doesn't break it down to pencils and paper, but instead puts it into categories
like salaries, overtime, training, and office supplies.
For some reason Bill Malinen refuses to put this budget book on the internet.
It has been done in the past. The only reason I can think that you would want
to refuse to do this is that you really don't want the public to know what you
are spending money on and figure that if you keep people in the dark, then you
will get less feedback, therefore making things easier for the administration.
We all know that they have this in an Adobe pdf file. City hall isn't working
back in the stone ages. So it would take them approximately 1 minute to put
this information on the website. Why I have been raising this issue multiple
times this year is that without the budget book, there isn't really any ability
for the public to actually comment on the budget.
Yes I freely admit that this document probably is available if I submit a
public information request and wait a few weeks, but personally I see no reason
to kill additional trees when it can be easily put on the website. Again, we
have the council claiming that they want citizen input, but their actions seem
to indicate otherwise.
Ken, if the real budget book was published on the city website, I would not
expect everyone to read it from cover to cover. Most likely busy people like
yourself would probably focus on one small part of it that you feel affects
you. Since it is typically organized, it should be easy to find those parts.
If many citizens put in a little time, I believe we could have a better product
in the end. Maybe we could end up with a product that the people want, rather
than a product that staff (most who live out of town) want.
John M. Kysylyczyn
K Solutions LLC, owner
3083 Victoria Street
Roseville, MN 55113
email: <email obscured>
home office: (651) 484-1384
www.ksolutionsllc.com
Mayor of Roseville, MN 2000-2004