The Wilmington State of the City Tantrum

Last night, Mayor Jim Baker of Wilmington was scheduled to deliver his annual State of the City Address to the City Council and the public.  As always, he had prepared remarks and started with an overview of the state of the city’s budget and his plan to deal with the budget shortfall.  He pretty quickly abandoned those remarks to deliver an explosive tantrum at the Wilmington City Council, castigating them (and blaming them) for the increased tensions and difficulties in getting administration initiatives passed.

It was an amazing thing to hear — you can watch video of the address at WDEL or at the City’s website.  Allen Loudell (who interviewed the Mayor shortly after the address)  has his thoughts up at his blog.

Basically, he turned from his Budget address to upbraid them for not being able to function enough to approve his initiatives.  He noted that he was tired of the “politics” coming from City Council, that — in Baker’s judgement — got in the way of the Council approving the administration’s legislation and initiatives.  Everyone knows Jim Baker to be famously testy and famously free to speak his mind, no matter the consequences, but this was something new.  This was Jim Baker demanding that City Council abandon their role as a co-equal branch of government and hunker down to rubber stamp his programs.  And revising his own history as City Council President to justify that demand.

I live in the city and work pretty closely with some of the City Councilpeople and some of the City people.  Some of these folks are even my friends.  But one thing that has always been clear to me about City Council is that they aren’t especially good at standing up for their own prerogatives as a co-equal branch of government.  This may be a function of the City Council Presidents that have come after Baker was there — who was legendarily protective of City Council prerogatives.  But Mayor Baker is not paying attention to a pretty serious dynamic in the City.

Plenty of the City’s residents are pretty unhappy with the City on a two major issues — law enforcement and neighborhood investment.   These are things that the Administration doesn’t want to hear any critique of their approach on — and I know because I’ve heard it first hand.  But people who are hearing this pretty routinely are City Council people.  And they are trying to push for some changes in police deployment — changes that have pissed off the Mayor royally.  There is a 24 hour community policing deployment that city residents want to try and have been told over and over again that we don’t know what we are asking for.  Even though when we started agitating for this, the Police Chief told us that he needed a minimum personnel strength to do that.  We supported and helped to lobby for that, but when they got close to those minimum resources, both the Mayor and the Chief backed off.  *This* is the kind of stuff that people are tired of.  And they are tired of what is looking like a real wave of unresponsiveness to legitimate issues.  Because how do you explain the fact that the downtown Market St area got 24/7 Community Policing, while the neighborhoods who lobbied for this did not.  The City Council hears this, but the Administration doesn’t.   And I don’t think that they know that people are as fervently wishing for the end of the Baker Administration as they were for the end of the Sills Administration.  That’s bad.

And as dysfunctional as I think the City Council is,  they get to sit at the table, they get to do some oversight and you don’t tell a bunch of grownups that they should sit down and do what they are told.  Because the message that the Administration should be hearing is they’ve done a pretty good job over the years and we want them to keep going, not to rest on their laurels.  Because there is plenty that can be done and can be done fairly cheaply.  For instance — stepping up enforcement of a Broken Windows policy (which generates its own revenue, gang),  freeing the WPD from the Administration’s Communications’s policy so that they can freely tell their (successful) story, looking for ways for departments to genuinely partner with neighborhood groups to focus effort and get work done.  You can’t send your Department Heads to meet with Councilmembers unprepared to deal with the data they are being asked for.  There is plenty more, but none of this stuff happens without an Administration that acts like it is defending a fortress.  And City Council needs smarter leadership — leadership who is perfectly willing to use the tools at their disposal to be heard AND leadership that can harness some of the grandstanding that is clearly done by some members of Council.

That said, the Mayor’s proposed budget actually *looks* like a shared pain budget — unlike the budgets proposed by the Governor or of NCCo Executive Paul Clark.  I’m unhappy about the tax increase, largely because I do think that the City Government needs some additional trimming.  And I think that if they can get the Unions to change some of the retention rules to give the City some flexibility in letting go its dead wood (and yes they have that.  Hang around City Hall long enough, and you know the list of people everyone wants to get rid of.), they’d be closer to being able to resolve some of their issues.  But I’ll admit that it isn’t enough to cover the shortfall.  The summary:

• The budget expenditures total $140.5 million—a reduction of $7.1 million, or a 4.8% decrease over the original FY 2011 budget.

• While the budget does not require any additional layoffs, 10 vacant positions would be eliminated in the Mayor’s Office of Economic Development, Public Works, Real Estate and Housing, the Law Department, the City Treasurer’s Office and City Council.

• No salary increases are proposed for City employees. While this is the third year that most City employees have gone without a salary increase, the City has not had to ask employees to take a pay cut, which other governments have done. City firefighters received a pay increase of 2.25% in FY 2010, and police officers received a pay increase of 2.5% in FY 2011.

• Union employees are being asked to increase their out-of-pocket contribution to their annual health care costs, just as non-union City employees did in FY 2011. This money-saving step would have to be negotiated with the City’s unions. The City’s police union, FOP Lodge #1, recently agreed to a contract requiring increased member contributions to health care. The Mayor thanked the police union tonight in his budget address for taking that important step.

• The Mayor is requesting that the City’s sanitation workers union reach a reasonable compromise with the City on a contract clause that enables the union to cancel the collection of trash and recyclables when it is raining and the temperature is below 45 degrees. The Mayor said the City will work with Local 320 to maintain worker safety while seeking more reasonable contract language.

• To increase the productivity of the City workforce and control costs, the Mayor proposed tonight that three paid holidays be eliminated in the next fiscal year. The holidays are Good Friday, Columbus Day and one of two President’s Days in the month of February. The Mayor asked the City’s unions to give this issue prompt consideration.

• To reduce costs in the Mayor’s Office, Police Department, Parks and Recreation and Public Works, the Mayor said the City will not hold a 4th of July Independence Day celebration this summer unless sponsors come forward who will cover the $125,000 cost of staging the event.

• The Mayor said he will further reduce the number of take-home vehicles assigned to City employees and will provide details to City Council and the public during Council’s upcoming budget hearings.

• The Mayor is seeking Council support for two ordinances that will help future Mayors and Councils keep up with the ever-increasing cost of employee pensions and retiree healthcare.  The first ordinance would reduce the City’s future liabilities for the cost of retiree medical programs by limiting coverage for new employees hired by the City on or after July 1, 2011. The ordinance would require those eligible employees to reach the age of 65 and enroll in Medicare before they can qualify for retiree health care from the City. The second ordinance would place all non-uniformed employees hired on or after July 1, 2011 into the State of Delaware, County and Municipal Pension Plan. Like City firefighters and police officers who have been enrolled in a State-sponsored plan since 1991, this plan for non-uniformed personnel would allow the City to close the current City pension plan to new hires.

• To maximize the availability of City revenues to fund City services, the Mayor tonight strongly urged Council to amend a provision of the City Code that allows unspent dollars from the cable television franchise agreement to be earmarked for future use by the City television station. The Mayor said while be believes that Council should continue to budget whatever amount it deems necessary to operate Channel 22 on an annual basis, but he also believes that any excess funds should remain in the City’s General Fund to help pay for other general City services.

• Even with the reductions in the cost of government and other efficiency measures he outlined tonight, the Mayor said the City is still facing a deficit for FY 2012, so he is proposing a 5% property tax increase that will produce approximately $1.9 million and close a gap between revenues and expenditures for next fiscal year. The average residential property owner in Wilmington would pay about $3.02 more per month, or $36.25 more each year if the property tax increase is approved.