NCCo Budget Listening Tour
I went to the one hosted by my New Castle County (NCCo) Council Rep (Jea Street) last Thursday at the Rose Hill Community Center. Turnout wasn’t great — maybe 50 residents — and the room had many county employees on hand to answer questions if need be (and a few of them did).
If you haven’t seen it, the Budget Presentation (entirely presented by County Executive Chris Coons) is on the county’s website. In a fairly detailed presentation, Chris Coons walked through this discussion focused on (mostly) high visibility services, their costs and employees; discussed the revenue shortfalls and the budget hole; talked about options to close that budget hole (relating the typical tax bill to what gets paid for cable or cell phones) and then asked people directly for their comments and input.
In this meeting, one man had a prepared comment re: police salaries and benefits that he thought could be cut back. The audience was mostly NOT interested in this solution. But this audience spent much of this time talking about some local industries polluting their neighborhoods. While one other woman had some choice comments on police salaries, once Coons asked people to vote for No New Taxes, Just Cut People and Services; Do a Balanced Approach Including Tax Increases and More Cuts; Tax Increases to Cover the Budget — the majority voted to increase taxes. Those who spoke were clear that they did not want their services cut, and would pay for it. Only two people voted for No New Taxes.
I found this remarkable. There was one News Journal report I read of an early tour meeting and that reported that the attendees voted overwhelmingly for a tax increase. SO where were all of the No New Taxes voices? You’d think that if Chris Coons and Paul Clark show up in one place to talk about taxes and services that some major segment of No New Taxes contingent would show up to make sure everyone know how they felt. And I expect that there may be places to talk about more cutbacks (if you add up the number of full time people accounted for in the major service areas on Coon’s slides and compare to the total number of FT people, there’s about 10% of the FT workforce unaccounted for); but cutbacks that would affect services. But I recognize that they have done some work to cut back — enough to cause some concern amount some of his supporters.
I live in the City, so any increases would be pretty trivial for me. But I often argue here about having an argument about paying for the government citizens want rather than arguments on reflexive tax cuts or tax increases. Chris Coons tried to do that and I give him some credit for that, but I am still just stunned that more of the anti-tax crew were not there. And by not being there, contributed to giving Coons a fair amount of latitude in fixing the budget hole.
Perhaps there were more dissenting voices at other meetings. If you went to one, you should let us know how it went. Because if the meetings went as mine did, Chris Coons bet that folks want their services more than lower taxes — and confronted with what they’d have to give up, the citizens in my group (and many of them definitely retired and low-income folks) voted to pay more to keep them.
One Thing I Learned: The County keeps its monthly cash flow reports (Checkbook) and its projected financial status up on the website.
Tags: NCCo
I went to one very early in the process, I think it was only the second one. According to Councilman Tackett, we were the only one that was divided – 1/3 tax increase, 1/3 cut, 1/3 undecided. It also sounds like there are some vocal people (the cut police benefits person) that travel to a lot of these meetings.
I think Coons and Clark deserve a lot of credit for how they ran these meetings. They laid it out pretty clearly about what would happen, and how much the taxes would increase. I think the numbers they cited were $20/month.
As far as taxation goes, I’ve always thought the anti-tax crowd was a very vocal minority since people actually like government services. Maybe I’m suffering from confirmation bias here.
UI: Re confirmation bias: In national polls, the percentage of people who rank cutting taxes as a high priority is — no big surprise here — about 28%, and it’s been about that for many years.
That is interesting, Geezer — given the amount of noise they make you’d think that there would be way more of them. And in the context of an opportunity like this, that they would have been out to have their say at every stop.
I’m not fan of increasing taxes, but do know that the cost of services never is a steady state. You have to pay for what you ask a government to do. And the tax cut-fixated never seem to understand that.
Nice recap Cass- Brandywine had more than 150 people there. I consider that area to be somewhat more conservative ( and look at the electeds -Rs Bob Weiner and Greg Lavelle, Tom Kovach,etc.) and the people in favor of raising taxes overwhelmingly outnumbered those who said don’t. The Exec said he would try and balance the amount of cuts and taxes to be roughly equal, which I think is a fair proposal.
However, the union benefits are out of control and have to be gone after to make any real dent in the long term….
My recollection of the Reda district meeting was 20% no tax increase, 50% a balance and 30% tax away. At the Sheldon meeting it was more 30% no, 60% balance and 20% tax away. I know Coons and his staff tried to get an accurate count of hands at both meetings, so I’m sure you can get those numbers if you try.
My impression was that many people would like to see all options to balancing the budget implemented, in moderation. That is; trim hours and staff at libraries, trim Spec. Services crews, increase Land Use and development fees, get another year or two out of their vehicles, hold staffing down in everything except police, paramedics and 911(where you hold the line) and consider requesting that the General Assembly cut the size of County Council.
In general, the sentiment seemed to be, everybody needs to give something.
The County Budget is structured to fail based on the employment contracts which have automatic pay escalators built in to the budget.
These escalators are driving a steady 6-8% growth every year regardless of the need, desire or want for services.
Increasing taxes in a deep recession is a very bad thing to do.
Coons has no choice but to have furloughs and pay adjustments, the gap is way too large for small cuts.