The Council approved our legislative priorities for the next General Assembly session last night. Download is here The big ticket items – BPOL & M&T – are still there and they’ve been joined by some items that almost double the City’s exposure! Safe to say that if even half of these cuts come to pass, we’ll not be talking about cutting museums or libraries, we’ll be laying off staff in droves, eliminating programs en masse, bailing out of the library system and the hits keep coming….here’s the most jarring piece of information of all:
BPOL – $2.8 million
M&T – $4.82 million
Communications Tax – $3.08 million
Roads – $3.26 million
Total $13.998 million which would equal 34 cents on the real estate tax rate.
The eliminations of the communications tax is a bit of new one. See, that was originally the “cell phone tax” that was approved by the GA about 10 years ago. It was a local tax and stayed local. At some point in the past couple of years, the inefficiency of collecting this tax at the local level became clear and everyone agreed the state would collect it, take a cut for their operating costs and remit the balance to the localities. The GA now believes this revenue is state revenue and wants to keep it all.
The Roads piece is also a new one. Roads have never been quite a simple as they appear. State roads in Counties and towns are maintained by the state. State roads in cities are differerent. The state has traditionally paid the cities to maintain state roads within their boundaries. They no longer want to do that.
If you look at all of this together, it’s hard to see how the GA is doing anything other than declaring war on her local governments. Honestly, I wonder why we bother. I know that those in Richmond are busy balancing their budgets on our backs but you would think they would leave our revenue streams alone while they’re busy forcing us to raise taxes so they won’t have to.
The impact on the City is hard to overstate. Since we’ve already cut our budget in real terms by about 15% the next cuts will be murderous. Those changes, if they all go through, will result in about $7 million in budget cuts. I promise you, the city government will be largely unrecognizable after these cuts. If all of the cuts go through, there won’t be a library, museum, parades, train festivals, arts, non-profit donations, road paving, sidewalk repair and leaf pickup is a goner. Parks will be shuttered. That will save about $3.75 million. The remaining ~$3.25 million bucks will come from tax increases, public safety cuts and public works cuts. Service times will go up and the majority of our public works maintenance programs will be eliminated. Mowing and street sweeping (which will clash with the states unfunded Chesapeake bay mandate) of any sort will be a fond memory. I’m not just crying wolf here. Oh, and the cuts to the schools will be about $6 million.
Of course, our hope is that our Delegate and Senator will side with us and help to minimize either the eradication of our tax revenues or the unfunded mandates. As a local government guy, I’m all about “replacement revenue” if tax funding sources are eliminated. Delegate Miller has always stood for (and campaigned on) the elimination of BPOL and M&T and that’s been that. Senator Colgan agrees that those taxes stink but also agrees that localities need revenue to educate children and police the streets.
We are meeting with both of our representatives next week to go over our priorities. I’ll report back on where our electeds are! Hopefully we’ll get some support and not have to completely disembowel our budget.
November 29, 2011 at 11:34 pm
Was the vote unanimous?
November 29, 2011 at 11:39 pm
It was not. Mr. Aveni voted against. I believe he supports the ED constitution amend ment but I am not 100% sure. For whatever it’s worth, I wasn’t wild about some of items but I feel compelled to support the recommendation of my peers.
November 30, 2011 at 10:12 am
Wow…that is STARK.
I guess we can hope the people in Richmond wake up and see this won’t work.
FFX city I would imagine is in the same boat?
November 30, 2011 at 11:39 am
Thanks for sharing with us. I sure hope the city gets some well deserved support because Robbing Peter to pay Paul is never a good idea.
November 30, 2011 at 12:05 pm
On the BPOL Tax, I forget what the economic impact was to the City when the threshold was approved in last budget cycle….and hard to say if/or/maybe was an impact since there was no full econ study to show benefit to small biz. Easy to calculate what the loss revenue would be, but in terms of the individual biz, an unknown.
Maybe as “Mr. Matrix” you could give a quick summary of the benefit when threshold raised????
As for over in PWC, when they raised their BPOL threshold, CXO reported it was a loss of $400,000 in revenue. Quick equate is that is 4 Police Officers. I agree overall it is a benefit to small businesses across our greater area in raising the threshold, but a loss of revenue to gov’t and really wonder as to if a small business did benefit aside from reduction of tax bill.
Now, for all those who use that ridiculous tag line “the BPOL was created to pay for the War of 1812” – come on, get real! Find another tag line! My counter is: and when was the War of 1812 paid off??? Last time I ever read history, I know there are still some issues from the Civil War in terms of payments stil floating around.
M&T: big cut to us, but another tax where the advocates say get rid of. Ok, if it so, so bad, then why is Micron still in the City??? For that matter, combined M&T and BPOL taxes sure have not hurt the Commonwealth for garnishing recognition as a great place to do business!
Finally, I compliment Senator Colgan for being resonable and knowing the impact of elimination without dedicated, sustainable funding streams. At least he serves well and displays leadership toward our City even when he does not like either tax.
December 1, 2011 at 9:40 am
Leaf pickup should be a “goner” as you say, Andy. I have said for the last several years it is a waste of dollars. I have never in almost my twenty years here ever raked to the curb – especially since I PAY for year round yard waste in my monthly Utilities bill. Take a ride around and notice how many people just rake out (schedule? what schedule? sayeth some homeowners) and then watch as those piles sit there, get rained or snowed on, get parked over, and just turn into a clumped mass that consumes more time for the crew to do it. And remove trash from the piles that clog up the machine? A waste – look at the cost and figure if it is really worth it when you get into all the side streets. And one more thing – since there is all the storm water and Bay issues, as those piles sit there they clog up the flow to the drains or decompose adding material to the water. With unlimited bags costing around 35cents each, people should “tag and bag” and save the City some money.
December 1, 2011 at 5:59 pm
I’ll ask again since I never saw an answer last year when I brought up the same points.
What is the REAL cost of leaf pickup? Is the some work in the City that the personnel aren’t doing because they are doing leaves? What equipment that’s already owned becomes surplus and what do we do with it once its sitting idled? What do we REALLY save by dropping it? Isn’t it considered “paid for” as part of our utility bill? So eliminate a service and we’ll see a lower bill, right? Just saying….
December 1, 2011 at 8:44 pm
Richmond stopped their leaf collection program and then started it up again after the uncollected leaves caused more problems in ditches, storm drains and on bike routes.
On an unrelated note, vote for Osbourn High School to win a $25K grant from Pepsi to buy new marching band uniforms – the current ones are 15 years old. Each uniform costs over $400 and there are more than 50 band members.
Here’s the video they submitted to the Pepsi Challenge:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-jpEO2r4r0&feature=player_embedded#!
December 1, 2011 at 8:47 pm
Pepsi Challenge website
http://www.refresheverything.com/osbournbanduniforms