Budget and Bed Tax

Well, the impossible has been achieved: the Budget Committee has prepared a balanced budget to present to the Full Board at the end of the week. After that, any adjustment need to be made by the full board.

It took a long time to close the $9 million+ gap. The $2 million+ tower project cost for next year was covered by loans, which will add almost $1 million in interest to be paid off during subsequent years. The reduction in projected DSS revenues was offset, to a great extent, by updated revenue projections in other areas of DSS function. There has actually been a lot of activity in this area since the original budget was prepared in August, and much of that activity results in good fiscal news for Otsego County.

Lots of projects won't get done next year; the technical term for this is “kicking the can down the road.” Department heads cut and shaved and did without. And a number of vacant positions – and some that were not vacant – were cut from the budget. But not as many as some folks wanted. Rick Hulse fought for the elimination of 25 positions County-wide, much more than was needed, because he felt that this was the way to longer-term stability. Don Lindberg wanted to cut more, for reasons that were not as clear. In the end, enough positions were cut – including two in the Sheriff’s road patrol – to get to zero, and no more.

Also cut was the bed tax distribution, which has been a lightning rod of controversy and perhaps the single most disputed issue on the Board this year. Until now, the 4% tax added on to tourist accommodations has all gone to the County, ostensibly to support and grow tourism, but, as we all know, money is fungible. Originally proposed by Oneonta then-mayor Dick Miller, Cooperstown mayor Jeff Katz, and Board member Ed Lentz, the distribution returns some of the bed tax that is collected to the municipalities, pro-rated based on the proportion of the total bed tax which comes from each municipalities.

The original proposal did not pass, but later in the year – in what can only be a bold political move – three Republicans, including some who had voted against it, re-introduced, with great media fanfare, a “new” bed tax proposal with extremely tiny and insignificant differences. It passed, and so a Democratic initiative became Republican. Two of the three Representatives who re-introduced the plan did not get reelected, so it is not clear whether this was a good move. At any rate, the will of the Board was, and is, that part of the bed tax should be distributed to the municipalities from which it emanates.

But that distribution was eliminated to balance the budget, so municipalities will have to wait until next year. Unless this whole process was developed to kill a plan and still take credit for it...

Vote

I've gotten to most (not all - sorry) of you, knocking on doors and doing democracy on your front porches. Again, thanks so much to all who were so gracious and hospitable, and really, without exception, that includes everyone who answered their door when I knocked. Thanks!

Now it's time to do your part. Those of you who know me understand my passion for democracy. Voting creates democracy, and we have to re-create it every year, every month, every day, every time we have an opportunity to speak up and make a choice about how our life in the community is going to go. If we don't do that, democracy goes away. I think you know what that looks like.

So come out and vote on Tuesday, November 3. Foothills atrium, from 6 AM through 9 PM. You can find fifteen minutes during that time to do something powerful and good and patriotic.

See you at the polls.

Planning

I've always thought of this blog as your first step in having an impact on County functioning. Knowledge is power, and if I can bring you some information that you think is important enough to act on – perhaps even through the blog to me – then that is a great thing. Here's another way to have a similar kind of impact.

There's a set of countywide public workshops coming up, whose purpose is to solicit public input into our strategic planning process. That sounds a little bureaucratic, but really, we're trying to look a little into the future, and see what's needed and what will be needed, and how we can steer the ship the right way, in order to get there.

If you're familiar with this process, you may be a little cynical about it, drawing on some experience you might have had when a strategic plan was drawn up with much fanfare and then put up on a high shelf and forgotten. I personally think that we need a comprehensive plan, a bigger look at a longer future (perhaps more on this distinction in a future post) but I do know this much: it certainly won't work if the people of Otsego County don't come out and participate. So come check it out.

H&E Gone to the Dogs (and Cats)

You may have read in the AllOtsego Weekly Update that one of the week's three “Top Stories” was that the County's Health and Education Committee, which I serve on, decided that “Animal Shelter Won't Get $100,000.”

That sounds a little harsh, of course – how could we not resist helping all those cute pets? Heck, the 16 year old cat currently on my lap came from the shelter as a kitten.

The truth is, that the Susquehanna Animal Shelter – which has no connection with the SPCA or the ASPCA, and receives no support from them – came to the H&E Committee, out of the blue, at exactly the worst time possible. The Board and all its committees are making extensive efforts to find every stray dollar to cut, in order to end up with a balanced budget in December. So – adding something new to the budget for next year is just not on the table, anywhere.

I happen to believe that the Shelter provides an important service to nearly all County residents: finding good homes for stray animals; managing the stray population in the county; preventing overpopulation and the eventual increase in strays that overpopulation would create. The Shelter has a hands-on Board and (probably) underpaid staff members who keep things going on a shoestring. It's a service that I think the citizens of Otsego County might be asked to share the cost of, by providing them an allocation in future years.

So, as a member of the H&E Committee, I couldn't help right now (although we all encouraged them to come back next summer, at the beginning of budget time), but as a citizen of Otsego County, I could: I sent them a donation as soon as I got home. I recommend that everyone consider doing the same.

"Crisis"

Also in the “Star” you'll see the term “financial budgetary crisis,” describing the fiscal state of the County right now, as we work on the 2016 budget. This seems a bit dramatic, although I suppose it depends on your definition of 'crisis.' I need to be a bit closer to impending doom before I use the term, but that's what was in the resolution instituting the “hiring freeze” today (see previous post).

It is true that we're a long way from a balanced budget, a destination we have to arrive at, and approve, before the end of the year. There are a lot of difficult fiscal issues that have converged on Otsego County this year, and it's harder than it has been for a while. But it is not impossible to overcome these problems.

The reimbursement issues affecting the Department of Social Services, which I help oversee as chair of the Human Services Committee, have been trumpeted continually as the source of our troubles by some Board members. We are projecting over two million dollars less in revenues than we have in the past, and this is, surely, a problem. But it's important for us to understand that it's a problem that originates completely in Albany, not Cooperstown. Given this, Treasure Dan Crowell is arranging meetings that will, it is hoped, move us closer to getting the NYS Comptroller, Tom DiNapoli, involved in some reforms that would allow us to receive reimbursements we have earned in a timely and predictable manner. You've heard about this before.

I'm a little put out by the fact that DSS is taking the public brunt of the “crisis.” I've responded strongly in a few meetings, and as a result, the problem is articulated as “Albany DSS.” Just once, I'd like to hear the tower project (which, in another retraction – sorry – actually is costing around $8 million) referenced as a part of the problem. We're in the hole about as much for this project as we are due to the DSS reimbursement issue. We've kicked the can down the road some by borrowing enough money to cover the cost of getting the towers done next year. From what I can tell, it will cost us just under a million a year for the next decade, or nearly. A lot of this – probably most – is because we missed a grant we could have had, and we missed it because we did not ask our grant-writing consultant to write the grant. Why? Lots of eye-rolling and averted gazes.

Don't buy the story that some folks are selling – that DSS is the department that has caused the “crisis.” It's propaganda, and it's not true.

Re-Freeze

You will probably see an article in tomorrow's “Daily Star” about a county-wide “hiring freeze.” In fact, if you routinely get the “Breaking News!” e-mails from the “Star,” you've already seen it.

The truth is, there has been a “hiring freeze” in place since 2008. It's easy to get around, and we've gotten around it now for seven years. The current “freeze,” emerging from Donny Lindberg's Budget Committee, essentially adds the Administration Committee, and the full Board in some cases, to the current process for filling vacancies. Currently, the parent committees need to approve filling any vacant position, and some of them need to go to the full Board. From now on, this process will require the approval of the Administration Committee and the full Board as well (Corrections is excluded, as we are required by law to maintain a certain staffing level in the jail).

So Otsego County has not stopped filling vacancies; it's just made the process of filling vacancies harder and longer, and given more people a chance to scrutinize each request. And there's no sunset clause, so this will no doubt be the process for some time.

More Dead. More Words.

It seems that words haven't stopped the killing:

It hardly seems worth the energy to once again make the same essential point that the President has now made again: we know how to fix this. Gun control ends gun violence as surely an antibiotics end bacterial infections, as surely as vaccines end childhood measles—not perfectly and in every case, but overwhelmingly and everywhere that it’s been taken seriously and tried at length. These lives can be saved. Kids continue to die en masse because one political party won’t allow that to change, and the party won’t allow it to change because of the irrational and often paranoid fixations that make the massacre of students and children an acceptable cost of fetishizing guns.

The 2^nd Amendment was never meant to guarantee individuals the right to own guns. At its worst, it was meant to assure the slaveholding South that they could maintain their State militias, seen as essential in preventing slave revolts, in ways that the new American standing army might not, and at best as an assurance that militias all over the country would be “well-regulated.”

It wasn't until 2008, in the Heller case, that one vote on the Supreme Court created a majority in favor of the individual's right to own guns. And even that decision acknowledged the need for regulation of that right.

Read your history, NRA members, and then come back and tell us that these massacres are necessary to uphold some spurious right that the Founders never intended.

Budget Time Again

The Budget Committee began chopping away at the $9.5 million gap this morning. The Committee is, essentially, the Administration Committee, but in this iteration, it is chaired by Donny Lindberg, the outgoing Representative from the southeastern corner of the county.

I would highly recommend attendance at these meetings for anyone who has the slightest interest in budgeting, County finances, or just the way groups of people operate in stressful situations. They are open meetings, which means the public is encouraged to attend. The next two will be at 9:15 on October 6 and October 19, in the second floor conference room of the County Office Building in Cooperstown.

The meeting began poorly, with Lindberg recommending a cut to our support of Cornell Cooperative Extension that, while miniscule in relation to the whole budget, would be fatal to a crucial agricultural education program, the Dairy and Field Crops team. Agriculture is Otsego County's top industry (tourism is second) and the team has shown some promise in the last year. Eliminating it as your very first act didn't make sense. Luckily, Lindberg couldn't get a second to his motion to make the cut he had suggested; he then moved cutting only half of that amount and, although he did get a second, he didn't get any further interest. The Committee felt it was better to follow the agenda and take the programs in order.

One of the biggest items for next year's budget is over $2 million to complete the multi-year, multi-million dollar tower project. I was wrong in my previous post: the total cost will be north of $20 million, not eight million. Grants have covered the great majority of the cost so far, but it turns out we did not get the final grant and will have to pay to finish the project (three towers and a lot of miscellaneous support expenses) from local funds. I found it interesting that noone at the table – including the new 911 Coordinator, Rob O'Brien, knew why we had not won the grant. Rob just started, so maybe that information is a little higher on the steep learning curve, but this is a big chunk of money to owe, on a project that must be completed, without knowing where we went wrong.

The Department of Social Services, which is overseen by my committee, Human Services, was also discussed. Their budget is enormous, and nearly all of it is spent to provide mandated services. The mandates – and the reimbursements for money spent – come from both NY State and the Federal government. I wrote about this a while ago. We need to find out how to be more engaged with the State agencies that bill, reimburse, and take back reimbursements in what seems to be a random manner, and carefully-thought-out movements toward accomplishing that are in the works.

I had to leave at noon (but made it further than Committee member Craig Gelbsman, who had to leave after about an hour), and they were beginning to talk about the completion of the roof project at the Meadows office building. I'll be there next Tuesday. More to come.

Campaign Time Again

 

It's campaign time again; the County Representative term is two years, so it's campaign time. I'll be running for reelection, and I hope to get to every house in the district before Election Day, as I have done before.

I particularly enjoy talking to people, usually on their front porches, about County issues and many other things that are on your minds. This is the essence of democracy, and as I've said before, I'm a big fan of democracy.

If you're interested in my re-election, you might want a stylish campaign sign (left) for your lawn. Let me know if you'd like one: I'll bring it to your house, install it, and then take it back the day after Election Day (unless you want to keep it...).

I look forward to meeting everyone again.

The Clock on the County Building

If you're like me, you've been looking at the clock on top of the County Building on Main Street, Oneonta, and wondering when it would be fixed so it will tell the right time. If you're as old as me, you've been wondering this for decades. Nothing like the most prominent landmark in the City leading us astray.

I got a letter from a constituent lately, about the clock, and so I had a reason to pursue the issue. I talked today with Doug Czerkies, head of the County Building Services Department; he's responsible for the building under the clock.

Doug had a surprise for me: although the County does, in fact, own the building – which used to be City Hall and the firehouse – the City still owns the clock! In fact, the clock has its own electric meter, billed to the City, and the City has an insurance policy just for the clock. That struck me as funny – I'm sure there is a reason that a clock needs an insurance policy (lightning strikes? Godzilla?) but that reason isn't perfectly obvious.

Doug says that the City is going to get to the clock sometime, and fix it so it tells the right time (on all four sides, I assume). There was a holdup on that project until recently, because no one could find the key to the clock tower. Apparently, Doug had one, and so soon we might get the time of day from the City clock on the County Building.

Just A Short Note About a County Manager

Otsego County is, by my reckoning, the second largest* County in New York State without an executive in charge of the day to day operations of all county departments and services. Most of the counties that are smaller than us have an executive, including six of the eight smallest.

We are constantly finding inefficiencies that are the result of very different departments working in ignorance regarding how the department down the hall does the same, or similar, thing. The Government Efficiency Committee is doing its best, but it meets only once or twice a month.

I know that the City of Oneonta has had two bad experiences with a Manager, but that has mostly been the results of factors unrelated to the Manager himself. We're actually lucky here – we've seen what the potholes and landmines are, and can plan for them.

We need someone to run what is equivalent to a medium-size corporation that is very diversified. More on this as time goes by.

* - Columbia county has, at last count, 835 more people than we do and is Manager-less as well.

UPDATE:  I had a faint memory of some change in a nearby county in this regard, so I looked it up.  Sure enough, in February of this year, Schoharie County (almost exactly half the size of Otsego) went to the County Administrator model.  So it is now true that seven of the eight smallest counties in the state have an executive of some sort.

$9.2 Million

You may have heard about the County's $9.2 million 2016 budget deficit, mentioned briefly by Treasurer Dan Crowell at the end of the last County Board meeting, and surfacing shortly thereafter as an article in the Star and then an editorial.

What was not flashed across the headlines was that Treasurer Crowell also said, when presenting the budget summary, was that we're at about the same place we've been in September of most budget years. There's a big gap and we have to close it, and close it we do.

Two items on his list concern me, though. First, revenue projections in the DSS budget will decrease by $1.2 million by next year. As you may know, I chair the Human Services Committee, which oversees DSS, and we've been struggling with this – and similar issues – for a while now.

The short version of this is that DSS's budget is almost entirely comprised of costs for mandated services and the reimbursements we receive from some of them. It would be nice if the State sent us a check in January for what we spent and claimed during the previous year (or some similar, naively simple scheme), but they don't. Checks from the State, and pass-through money from the Feds, show up at random times, and are often difficult or impossible to determine just what they are for. And then – often four or five years later – out of the blue, the State will “claw back” some of that money, for reasons which are not always clear, either, but generally have to do with their impression that we were overpaid.

We're making some personal appeals to NYS Comptroller Tom DiNapoli about this, on behalf of us and most other counties. This kind of thing has to stop, and the departments in Albany responsible for this funding stream must become more organized and timely, because $1.2 million makes a big difference in Otsego County.

Another $1.2 million item is the local cost of the new towers being built to create a much more comprehensive communications system for our emergency services personnel throughout the county. The project has been going on since before I was on the Board, and the total pricetag is over eight million dollars. We hear of progress almost monthly; right now, we're hoping to have it in place and working next year.

This project has been grant-funded. I don't remember hearing, in previous years, about a $1.2 million local share at the end of the project; we certainly haven't been talking about preparing for it financially over the long term. It's something we all need to learn much more about.

The Daily Star urges us “to be judicious in making whatever cuts necessary to balance the budget.” We always are, and we will be again, with our without the Star's urging. We'll have a balanced budget, that everyone is able to examine and comment on, by the end of December.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Did you know that both Hannaford and Price Chopper have to, by law, collect and recycle certain types of thin film consumer items right in their stores? Neither did I, until I started working with a new County task force.

I am a member of the 3R Task Force (reduce, reuse, recycle), a subcommittee of the Solid Waste/Environmental Concerns Committee. Actually, it's a task force I recommended we form, in order to reduce the solid waste sent to the landfill from Otsego County. Ed Lentz (D-New Lisbon) chairs it, and we met again last night in Hartwick.

There's a lot to learn in this arena. First of all, landfills: not infinite. It is essentially impossible to get a permit for a new major landfill in New York State, and, as they fill up, they close. This is another one of those lurking environmental disasters about which we're not quite clear right now, but which could provide a nasty and expensive surprise to our children or grandchildren.

Ironically, it's not in the solid waste industry's financial interest to reduce the tonnage that ends up in the landfill. They are paid by the ton, and reducing tonnage reduces revenue. That's true for the County, as well, as a result of our transfer station agreement with Cassella, but the County is not (at least from my viewpoint) in the business of making money from solid waste.

However, reducing tonnage is in everyone's interest, not only because we're running out of places to put it. A lot of the trash that ends up in landfills doesn't stay there, and does damage elsewhere – for instance, microbeads, the extremely tiny plastic beads found in many personal care products that find their way through septic filters and water treatmentplants, polluting waterways and concentrating in marine life, whichmistake them for food. Some states and counties have outlawed the sale of products containing microbeads, and some home care corporations have pledged to take them out of their products. Should we do this in Otsego County? More to come.

There's a company in western New York State that disassembles mattresses and recycles the components, where possible. If you think of the truckloads of mattresses that are thrown out just by the colleges and hotels in Otsego County each year, these mattresses are a significant addition to our landfills. There's a catch, of course – this company charges to take away the mattresses. Should we set up a tractor-trailer at the transfer station to store the mattresses? Charge the consumer? Pay for it from the County budget? Require Scholet and the other furniture stores to charge a fee for every mattress sold? We are making plans to pilot something like this next year.

Lots more. Fabrics are recyclable, but we don't generate enough volume out here in the country to justify the recyclers to add us to their route. Dunkin' Donuts still uses expanded polystyrene (styrofoam) cups for medium and large coffees. How do we get them to move to more recyclable products? How about an Otsego Green program, where retail businesses can earn a green certification that they 'display proudly'? We've all seen the mile or two sections of highway that are 'adopted' by an organization for litter pickup. How do we offer a mile or more of the Susquehanna riverbank for the same service?

As is often the case, more questions than answers. But we're working on answering the questions that come up, one by one. Any ideas?

In the Same Boat

As time goes on, I hope to have more and more to say, and to do, about the staffing levels of some County departments.  During the recession, which means during the last seven years or so, each budget year has seen fewer workers in many departments.  The Highway Department, for instance, has lost almost half their staff.  We saved money and got through.  Services suffered.

The economy is looking up.  Sales tax is below budget estimates, true, but the year isn't over yet.  We no longer have the Manor and MOSA subsidies making it exceptionally hard to balance the budget.  It's time to think about two things:

• What is the County really in the business of doing?
• What departments do we need, staffed at what levels, to do that business well?

I'm hoping that the Strategic Planning initiative, developed by the Government Efficiency committee, will see these as central questions.  In the meantime, we are woefully close to being in the same boat as this desperate crew:


More to come on this.