Mayor Cole offered five proposals for solving the city's current financial shortfall at last night's city council meeting. The one that attracted the most attention is the proposal to privatize the city's water, sewer and refuse collection, since , according to the mayor's proposal, this would generate a one-time cash infusion of some $42 million. The other options proposed are as follows:
1. do nothing and hope the problem goes away. Always popular.
2. Re-instate the property tax. This is the proposal of the city staff and would generate about $1.3 million per year. Corine McDaniel was the only council person to speak out in favor of this one; rather she spoke out against the proposed sales tax increase (#3).
3. Increase the sales tax by .25 % to 8%. This would raise an estimated $1 million. The other $300,000 would come through the reduction of 6 city staff positions. Councilmen Jack, Wissmann and Haynes spoke in favor of this option, though probably not the staff reduction.
4. Increase the sales tax by .25% to 8% and privatize the city's refuse collection, instead of staff reductions. The privatization would raise about $300,000, thus keeping the six staff positions.
I have always love Brad shows up for these things and looks smart. You may or not agree with him, but he comes prepared and ready to go. I really like this, here are your choices and let's play multiple choice. I think what we will see is there are very few in Carbondale that have the stomach for anything resembling a hard choice. Wonder if "1" is going to be chosen? :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for the report, enjoyed reading it from afar.
PtG
Why not increase the water and refuse rates and keep the money for the city? Why give (er...sell) the revenue source to a business to milk it for cash when the city could do that themselves? It wouldn't generate the tens of millions of dollars right away, but at least then the money would stay in the community and go to local civil servants rather than to shareholders wherever they might be.
ReplyDeleteTo turn an old saying on its head, why sell the cow when you can get the milk for free?