Photo by Ryan Howard
Forest Lake Park Board members Chris Soderlind, Mitch Berggren and Karen Morehead appeal to the City Council to include funds in the 2015 budget to fully fund the position of Park and Recreation Coordinator Nicole Schossow (sitting at far left).
The Forest Lake City Council voted 3-2 at its Dec. 15 meeting to remove around $540,000 from its preliminary 2015 general fund budget, bringing it in line with the similar cut from its preliminary levy of made last week.
The biggest single source of the cuts comes from utilizing an expected surplus of $230,000 in 2014 to fund some one-time budget purchases in 2015, but the reductions also included one layoff: city fire inspector and daytime firefighter Bruce Wightman. Park and Recreation Coordinator Nicole Schossow, whose job was also up for a potential cut to half-time in previous budget discussions, will be kept on at full time for the first half of the year, after which her position may be kept on if she has been determined to provide sufficient monetary value to the city via grant writing and other duties.
The general fund budget for 2015 was set at $8.83 million, about $543,000 lower than the preliminary budget approved by the council in September. On Dec. 8, the council approved a property tax levy of $8.35 million, about $590,000 less than the preliminary 2015 levy.
“It was a quick exercise, but I think we’re going to have a great city government model to move forward, to move efficiently, the way people operate in their personal lives and the way businesses have to (operate),” Councilman Ben Winnick told The Forest Lake Times. After the council vote on Dec. 8, he and Councilman Michael Freer formed a council subcommittee to consult with City Administrator Aaron Parrish on what parts of the budget should be cut to fall in line with the levy.
Throughout the process of setting the final budget, the majority of Councilmen Richard Weber, Freer and Winnick stated that they felt the addition of debt service for public funding of a YMCA in Forest Lake was too much of a spending increase for taxpayers, particularly when taxes already increased in 2014 due to the funding of the new city center. However, the previous council majority of Mayor Chris Johnson and Councilwomen Molly Bonnett and Susan Young structured the bond issue for the project so that the funds for the YMCA would be out of the hands of the city and in the hands of the nonprofit by the time a new member was voted in to replace the appointed Bonnett – making it nearly impossible for a new majority to back out of the deal. Since the men still wanted to reduce the tax impact of the YMCA, the only other place cuts could be made was to the city’s operational budget.
“I think the reductions are, I would say, a good compromise, a balance between what was agreed to back in the (August) budget (workshops) and kind of implementing it with a minimum amount of impact on the city staff and yet keeping public safety first and foremost,” Freer told The Times, referencing the city’s “Option A” budget proposal, the lowest budget of four options discussed during the fall workshops and one of two options that did not include funding the YMCA.
Subcommittee
Winnick said the option of using a projected $230,000 in 2014 budget surplus – thanks to good financial planning on staff’s part and an unexpected influx in building permits – to help offset 2015’s budget came up during the discussions he and Freer had with Parrish throughout the week. Under the option, a plow purchase and a siren software purchase will be transferred from the 2015 budget to the 2014 budget, where they will be paid for with the surplus.
Though Winnick spoke on Dec. 8 about applying budget cuts across all departments, including police, the police budget was left mostly unaffected. In particular, the layoffs of two officers and a discontinuation of the department’s K-9 program were not implemented.
“It just wasn’t a responsible thing to make a cut and especially to make a cut in such a short period of time,” Winnick said, adding that he wants to research more fully throughout the year if the department can reduce its spending without affecting resident safety. “I believe it can, but there’s that concern.”
Freer noted that though the process was quick, he felt misrepresented by some who accused the council of cutting the budget and levy after it had been decided.
“It was a preliminary levy; the final levy wasn’t set, so it wasn’t after the fact,” he said of the $8.94 million approved in September.
In addition to the surplus and staff positions affected by the budget, the decision also delayed or modified purchases and usages of city vehicles and reduced line items in various departments across the city. The decision also adjusted some line items down based on historical trends; for example, the budget for paying on-call part-time firefighters was reduced because of lower calls for service in recent years. If costs are as expected throughout 2015, the city will also supplement the budget with about $43,000 from its reserves of $5.1 million.
Finance Director Ellen Paulseth told The Times that if any department goes 10 percent over budget on a line item, it must get permission from the city administrator to transfer funds from a different budget item. If there are no funds in the budget that can be transferred, the department must get permission from the council to spend more money.
“I don’t think there’s any question that the budget in its entirety has been cut pretty close and it will be a challenge to maintain it, but we will work very hard to monitor (expenses), and we will do our best to stay within it,” she said.
Discussion
Johnson’s and Young’s last meeting on the council was tense. During the open forum, those who were in favor of the cuts railed against the YMCA and city center, accused police presence of running Friar Tuck’s out of business and said that council actions had fostered a division between residents of the old township and the rest of the city. Those who were against the cuts said the reductions would be regressive, accused the council of fostering bad morale and public image and wondered if the in-sync actions of the three majority members indicated that open meeting violations were going on behind the scenes.
Much in particular was made of the status of Schossow’s position, which will be evaluated at the year’s halfway point to see if the grants and other contributions the city has received as a result of the position are deemed significant enough to keep the job at full time. Some speakers felt that the requirement was cruel and would force Schossow to spend most of her time writing grants in order to try to keep her job.
“It’s kind of unprecedented,” said park board member Mitch Berggren, who explained that he did some research on equivalent situations with the contacts he has as a committee administrator for the Minnesota Senate. “There really isn’t a city that has ever asked for a government employee to finance her own position.”
Johnson and Young made multiple motions to add or reallocate funding to provide for the funding of Wightman’s and Schossow’s positions, but they were voted down. Young’s motion would have added $125,000 to the budget to help fund the positions and some other expenses, while Johnson’s motions would have been revenue neutral by adding funds back to the positions while cutting from a new park mowing contract, council and mayoral salaries and cable commission contributions. Freer said that removing the mowing contract would create more work for the city’s public works department, while Winnick said that diverting cable funds would be a disservice to the residents who expect their cable funds to improve their public access television.
Parks position
After the meeting, Schossow said that she expected her job duties to change as a result of the vote. To raise grant money commensurate with the cost of her position, she said, would mean that “pretty much the only thing I would be doing is writing grants.” Even then, a grant she applied for in the spring or early summer might not come in until the fall or winter.
Freer stated during the meeting that he had faith in Schossow’s ability to procure additional funds or in-kind contributions for the city, all of which would be counted in her favor when her position is evaluated. While Schossow said she would spend more time applying for grants than she had in the past, she said she wouldn’t neglect the other parts of her job.
“Whether I get grants or not is not going to affect the residents of Forest Lake,” she said. “What does affect the residents of Forest Lake is us putting on a lousy event.”
However, she noted that she does hope to see the position eventually is added back into the budget at full time without conditions, allowing whoever is working at the job to engage in more community building and other improvements.
“The needs are significant,” she said.
Fire inspector
Under the budget decision, Wightman will be laid off at the end of December, leaving the city with no fire inspector.
“It’s just ludicrous to me that we would go this route,” Johnson said before the layoff was approved.“The fact that there were so many other opportunities for non-public safety-related cuts that were passed over to get to this to me is absurd, especially because it’s only $8 a year for the typical resident.”
After the meeting, Johnson said he felt that some council members felt that enforcing the fire code was a nuisance for local businesses and that the removal of the position was a way to keep businesses from having to spend time and money adhering to the code.
“My feeling is that the council would, if they could, unadopt the fire code,” he said.
Winnick noted that new buildings would still be inspected for fire safety as part of the building inspection process, and he added that large public facilities like schools are inspected by a state fire marshal. Freer said he believed the city will find a way to reorganize the duties so they can be done in a different way.
In the interim, however, the city will conduct little to no fire inspection of buildings in Forest Lake. Parrish said that the city’s current option sees the city building inspector and building official doing fire inspections when they have time, but with their schedules so busy that Wightman has been helping them do building inspections for the last several months, he acknowledged that their time to do fire inspections will be slim.
Fire Chief Gary Sigfrinius reiterated that he does not know what the city will do for fire inspections after Wightman is gone.
“There’s a lot of work there to be done, but there’s nobody to do the work,” he said.
He added that throughout the budget reduction process, neither Parrish nor any council member consulted with him on his recommendations for cuts or a strategy for how fire inspection could be conducted under the new staff structure.
“Through all of this, no one’s ever called,” he said.
Resident impact
Freer remarked that he feels that calling what the council voted on “cuts” is disingenuous because the property tax levy will rise 3.86 percent over 2014’s total.
“Only in government do we talk about cuts because it’s not as much of an increase as a few people wanted,” he said.
However, whether the final budget and levy is a cut or an increase likely depends on one’s point of view. Freer is correct that the overall levy went up by $310,000, thanks to YMCA debt service repayment that will cost $620,000 next year. However, the city’s general fund budget – where the council decided to reduce expenses – will be about $164,000 lower than 2014’s general fund budget.
Additionally, the city’s tax rate, which determines what percentage of a property’s tax capacity is taxed by the city, will drop 4.2 percent next year to 42.789 percent. This means that if a property owner’s property stays at the same value in 2015 as it was in 2014, his or her city taxes should decrease by 4.2 percent. However, the tax rate only increased because of increased property values in the city, so most, but not necessarily all, property owners will still be paying more money than last year. If the city’s average value home of $191,500 increases in value by a projected median of 6 percent, for example, it will be worth about $203,000 and be taxed around $787.31 by the city, an increase of roughly $21.50 in city property taxes.
Courtesy of the city of Forest Lake, here are the reductions made from the 2015 preliminary budget.