Fee Item Shows Need For Unified Budget Approach by City

But one of the biggest issues that we have not spent nearly enough time discussing is in producing a unified budget.  Part of that will be the creation of multiyear budgets, which will force the city to budget and plan across time.

On Tuesday’s City Council agenda is but one small example of that.  There is an item that contains the recommendation that the council establish Facility, Field and Miscellaneous Equipment Rental Fees for implementation through the Community Services Department in fiscal year 2011/12 per the existing approved Aquatics, Facility and Field Cost Recovery Policies.

Maybe this is a small deal, but it illustrates a key point, why would the city implement the policy outside of the budget process?  One answer is timing.  The city needs to be able to post the fees in time for the recreation season. 

But should not these fees be based on budgetary considerations?  And shouldn’t the council be looking at those budgetary considerations as a whole rather than separating out numerous parts?  In part, is that not what has gotten us into this mess in the first place?

This actually becomes a bit more perplexing after we read the staff report on fiscal input.

They write, “Unlike the Recreation Activities Cost Recovery policy, the Aquatic, Facility and Field Cost Recovery policies are designed more as fee setting policies rather than having pre-designated percentages that each facility must recover.”

It would be interesting to understand why that would be the case. 

The staff report continues, “The Aquatic, Facility and Field Cost Recovery policies are aimed at reviewing both prior year and budgeted costs associated with the maintenance and operation of each city rental facility, and developing annual fees based upon various percentages of these costs while maintaining fees at reasonable levels.”

Then they write, “By increasing fees and making expenditure adjustments in compliance with the Aquatic, Facility and Field Cost Recovery policies, the cumulative budgets for the Recreation and Parks divisions are designed to absorb annual department-wide human resource and operating cost increases and operate without significantly increasing the General Fund subsidy.”

That point makes some sense, but then the question is what about seeking to decrease the general fund subsidy?  This is again why I question having this discussion outside of the broader budget discussion.  Because at some point, the city is going to have to review the costs for all of these services and determine whether they can continue to provide them.  By having this as a separate item, we may be losing critical context.

The staff report continues, “Based upon the proposed rental use fees, revenue projections for FY11-12 are anticipated to increase slightly as compared to the current year as this will be the first full year of implementation of the amended Facility Cost Recovery policy, thus eliminating the ability for user groups to receive multiple rate discounts. The Community Services Department also experienced some minor reductions in administrative costs due to the citywide re-organization involving the former Parks and General Services Department.”

This again is part of the issue, as the reorganization has largely been based on attrition rather than a true assessment for what services the city should provide and what the costs are of those services.

The staff report notes, “On Monday, January 10, 2011, the Finance and Budget Commission also discussed and reviewed the proposed facility, field and miscellaneous equipment rental use fees for FY2011-12. The Finance and Budget Commission did not take any specific action related to the proposed fees, however, they did express the desire to further discuss the respective Cost Recovery policies with the Recreation and Park Commission in March 2011.”

The bottom line here is to examine all budget items within a unified context.  We need to look at the big picture and set policy based on that.

In the interim, the council would be justified in taking the approach that they want an across-the-board reduction in costs as they prepare to absorb the pension hit.  However, that would assume that all programs and services were created equal.  There has really been little effort to systematically assess what services we provide, the priority of those services, and the relative weight we are going to give.

We have simply assumed that what we provide is what we should provide and we have decreased funding across the board.

As I said at the outset of this discussion, a multiyear approach will force the city to think more systemically than they have, but we need that broader discussion sooner rather than later.

—David M. Greenwald reporting