SIU President

The more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that SIUC and SIUE should split and the position of president of SIU eliminated. The two universities have charted different courses for several years now.  SIUE pulls in students from the St. Louis metro east area and has seen steady increases in attendance over the past 15 years, with minimal amounts of drama.

SIUC, on the other hand, has seen slight but continual declines in attendance, turmoil at the top, and enough faculty dissatisfaction that both graduate students and faculty formed unions. The skills need to successfully guide SIUC are significantly different.  In business terminology, SIUE needs a leader focused on maintaining growth, while SIUC needs a turnaround specialist.

At one time, while SIUE was growing as a spinoff of SIUC, it made sense to have them both operate under the same leadership.  Today, much less so.

Bike Lanes

It appears that some funding has come to the city, with the result that that we will be getting two new bike routes striped out.  The city and IDOT will stripe one path along S. University from Walnut to Mill and the other along S. Illinois, also from Walnut to Mill.  Not certain how this will affect parking along the two streets but we should expect to see the bike lanes in place by late summer.

West Sycamore

The contractor hired by the city finally finished the repairs Wednesday to West Sycamore after tearing the street up in 2013 to repair mains located along and under the street.  Though I am glad to see them completed and the new concrete does provide a smooth ride, march is certainly a long time past the promised Thanksgiving completion date given last fall.

Sales Taxes

Both sales tax increases passed last night, going into effect July 1.  Apparently they, along with some cost cutting measures, will leave the city with about a $40,000 surplus for fiscal 2015.

Received an email after last night's post pointing out that city ordinances exclude those renting a motel room for 7 days or longer from paying the hotel/motel tax. Since many of the hotels west of Giant City Road offer weekly and monthly rentals, most of the increased motel tax will come from those who stop in motels east of Giant City Road for only a night or two.

Also, Carbondale's high percentage of those with incomes below poverty level is symptomatic of all college towns. Students typically have very low incomes but generally receive support from families or other sources such as loans or Pell Grants.

Sales Taxes and City Council

Still no cable broadcast of city council meetings, at least none that I can fine.  The council is supposed to vote on raising both the general sales tax and the hotel tax.

It is much easier for residents to support an increase in the hotel sales tax, simple because that tax is paid by visitors to the city, rather than by residents.  Only on rare occasions would a local  stay in one of Carbondale's hotel, though several local motels have become de facto residential motels, offering weekly and monthly rates, rather than relying on night by night clientèle.  Those using the motel as a residence will, of course, have to pay the higher tax, but said tax will not affect the larger population of Carbondale.

Similarly most residents will find raising the sales tax preferable an increase in the property tax, since the sales tax falls across all residents of Carbondale as well as those outside the city who travel here to work and shop. A property tax would concentrate the tax among a comparatively small sector of the population, moreso in Carbondale than in other communities, due to the roughly 70% of property in town owned by absentee landlords.  Most property in Carbondale is rental property, so any property tax increase would fall upon a comparatively small number of owners.

A sales tax increase spreads the burden out more widely, though it does fluctuate more than does a property tax and forces those who work here, but may live outside Carbondale, to help pay for municipal services they use when in town, increasing tax revenues beyond those which could reasonable be generated solely from residents (thought the argument that, since Marion's sales tax is higher than Carbondale's, we can more easily raise it seems somewhat specious to me).  The problem, of course, with the sales tax, is that it is regressive, taking a larger percentage from those with lower incomes than those with higher.  Arguably, property owners are significantly better off than the average Carbondale resident, roughly 66% of which lived below the poverty level in 2009, and could more easily afford an increase in the property tax than the average Carbondale resident could afford a sales tax increase.

Still, no mention of a property tax increase is on the agenda, so we shall probably see an increase in the motel tax tonight, as well as, after significant breast beating,  a sales tax increase.  Hopefully, the council enacts one with a sunset clause in it, requiring them to revisit it a few years hence.

Taxes at City Council

Proposals to purchase a couple of brand new vehicles for Building and Neighborhood Services and Meter Services and to increase local sales taxes are on the agenda for tomorrow's city council meeting.

While both the vehicles getting replaced are quite old ( 1986 in the case of Meter Services and 1996 in the case of Building and Neighborhood services), I still have to wonder about buying brand new vehicles. Given that the average new car drops 11% in value almost as soon as you purchase it, and that the city is still rather short on money, as evidenced by the taxes proposed later on the agenda, why not buy vehicles a few years older and save the money?

Also, tomorrow the council will vote on raising the city sales tax by 1/4% to  8.5% and the hotel tax by 1% to 9%, still cheap compared to the 14% I have seen in other locales.  Raising the hotel tax will generate an estimated additional $75,00 per year, while the sales tax would put an additional $1.04 million per year into city coffers.

The rationale for the increase is that due to the recession, local sales have not generated the expected and budgeted for tax revenues for the city.  Since I would be willing to bet these go through, I rather like the Chamber of Commerce's proposal of a sunset clause in the ordinance, forcing the council to re-enact the tax 2-3 years down the road.  If the economy picks up, the extra money would no longer be needed to support the budget and, if it is, the council should be able to justify it again.  Without some sort of end date, all ordinances such as this, enacted to deal with a particular problem tend to stay around while the problem they were enacted to deal with does not.

Request for Reconstruction Amendment

Received an email pointing out that Michael Kimmel's request for a change in the ordinance regarding the reconstruction of buildings built in Carbondale before 1974 is due mainly the the way in which many of those buildings were constructed.  Currently city ordinances require homes and outbuildings to set back from property lines.  Many older homes in Carbondale, built pre-zoning, come up right to the property line, especially the garages and other outbuildings and therefore do not conform to current standards.

The change would allow repairs and reconstruction of those buildings where they stand, without having to wait for natural causes to damage them, essentially grandfathering them in regarding placement on the lot while bringing them up to code in other ways. Many of the lots on which these buildings stand are pretty small and requiring movement of the building is likely not feasible in a number of cases.