Cd'A City Council amends budget

COEUR d’ALENE — Whether the city should raise property taxes to fund a portion of the latest city of Coeur d’Alene budget resulted in fencing between council members Tuesday, including members who plan to run for election again next year.

The budget was amended for a zero property tax increase with Mayor Steve Widmyer casting a tie-breaking vote. Of the six council members, Amy Evans, Woody McEvers and Dan English opposed the measure. Before the three-hour meeting ended, comptroller Vonnie Jensen and city administrator Troy Tymesen took a 15-minute recess to crunch numbers for the amended budget, and the council by a 4-2 vote — Amy Evans and Woody McEvers were opposed — passed the amended budget of $90,685,504 for next fiscal year.

The amount was approximately $480,000 less than the proposed final 2018-19 budget council started with, and about equal to a 2.25 percent property tax increase.

The meeting, which usually runs an hour, included a public hearing before council member Dan Gookin, in an effort to remove the proposed 2.25 percent property tax increase, asked to have several items cut from the budget.

Gookin proposed cutting additional police radios, but the biggest money saver, he said, would be to kill a project that was better left to private industry: chip sealing streets.

The street budget included the addition of two dump trucks, chip seal equipment and added two city street employees to help with summer chip seal projects.

Total savings by erasing those items would be close to the $480,000 that a 2.25 percent property tax increase would bring into city coffers.

But McEvers balked at the idea of removing trucks and equipment from the street budget because two of the city’s trucks, which are also used to remove snow and leaves, are old and require a lot of repairs.

He said the city is judged by its streets, and in the past few years some of the city streets have fallen into disrepair as money was allocated elsewhere.

Not raising property taxes at the expense of streets — the city did not raise property taxes last year either — didn’t seem prudent, McEvers said.

“I get it,” he said. “I don’t want to raise taxes either.”

Not collecting the 2.25 percent tax would have a physical impact in the city, he said.

“We spend more than that just on merit increases,” McEvers said.

Council members, in an earlier discussion before voting, pointed out that historically city property taxes aren’t increased during an election year, and next year was a city election.

McEvers said if the council fails to increase taxes this year, it would likely punt again next year, regardless of how necessary a tax increase is for the city.

“Next year is an election year, and we just won’t take an increase,” he said.

One of the issues with the proposed chip seal program that rankled other council members, was a lack of financial vetting. They didn’t know if it would save money to have the city chip seal versus bidding the work to private contractors. They wanted to see a price comparison.

Spending a lot of money on equipment may be less prudent than hiring out the job, said council member Kiki Miller, but she didn’t know, because she had no comparison.

“It needs to come back and be vetted,” Miller said.”I think it needs to be encouraged to come back, so that this does get vetted out properly.”

Miller voted for the amended budget that struck the chip seal proposal.

“It’s not that it’s a bad idea,” she said. “I just haven’t seen that it’s a great idea.”

In opposition to the amendment, McEvers said the immediate savings could end up costing the city more later.

“I think we’re trying to not raise taxes by 2.25 percent,” he said. “This accomplishes not raising taxes, but next year, where’s it going to be?”

Increased outlays are what’s required to keep the city running smoothly, and keeping its streets looking good.

”It’s the cost of doing business in this world,” he said.