Yesterday, I reported on the Richardson City Council's review of the 2023-2024 Second Quarter Financial Report ("Council Recap: The Case of the Missing Sales Tax"). I included what most of the City Council said. Privately, someone asked, "Where was the Mayor during this discussion?" The literal answer is that he was right there with the rest of the City Council. The more interesting question, "What was he thinking?" is one I can't answer.
As a reminder, the big news was the fact that there is a serious hole in the budget due to the fact that, with seven months of remittance, sales tax revenue is $1.84 million below the budget target.
During the review of all this, Mayor Bob Dubey's only contribution was to call on different Councilmembers when they signaled that they had something to say. After everyone who wanted to speak had been heard from, Mayor Dubey closed the discussion with, "All right, Bob [Climire, Richardson Budget Officer], thanks very much. Great presentation."
What about a year earlier, in July, 2023, when the budget was proposed, with a 5% raise for employees, and the City Council, at Councilmember Ken Hutchenrider's urging, asked City Manager Don Magner to increase the raises to 6%, at a cost of an additional million dollars to the annual budget? What was the Mayor's contribution to that discussion?
It turns out he actually said something substantive that time. Or asked something substantive. He asked Magner, not whether we can afford increasing raises from 5% to 6%, but if there's a way we can introduce gamesmanship into our budget setting calendar in order to keep other cities from seeing our raises and then setting their own raises to one up us.
Can I ask one thing, please? Would you, because of the Council, several people being new, talk to us about the timeline in which we present and we get our budgets set and so forth, versus the same cities that we benchmark against and how they're able to see where we are? And then they do their raises periodically, and I guess, incrementally if they're able to do it after we post ours. Is there a way to benefit our employees by maybe adding maybe that 1% especially after we're into the budget and that later and give us a bump that keeps us above our other cities?
Source: Mayor Bob Dubey.
And that's where Mayor Dubey was in the 2023 discussion.
City Manager Don Magner replied, "I think from a strategy standpoint, if we were going to do the 6%, I would suggest do it all in the beginning of the year so that it's not uncertain to employees."
That's what ended up happening. The only uncertainty left is where else the budget will have to be cut to make up for the shortfall in sales tax revenue. Stay tuned to see if the City Manager asks the City Council for ideas before he presents them with his own answer. And whether Mayor Dubey then says anything other than "Great presentation."
"Six percent secure,
Employees breathe easier,
Yet cuts elsewhere loom."
—h/t ChatGPT
No comments:
Post a Comment