The Observation Deck

By this time next year the City will have spent all of its financial reserves and have no authority to borrow additional money. Since the City will not have the cash it needs to fund day to day operations something will have to give.

What would you cut?

How did we reach this point?

Bill
Assuming we actually get to that point, I suppose the first thing to cut would be the salaries and benefits of the Council and Mayor.....

Then I suppose we should sell all the Cushmans and make garbage collection biweekly from Sept. through April.

But, of course that's just a drop in the bucket. What we'd probably have to do is look at liquidating city owned assets. Large lot on Bell just south of the tracks.....Kaufman Park. Hell, sell Lakewood park (can't keep it up anyway). Might be able to keep a slice of it, say where the pool is.

Jeff

Jeff Endress wrote: Assuming we actually get to that point, I suppose the first thing to cut would be the salaries and benefits of the Council and Mayor.....

I guess that is a start. The Mayor makes $65,000 a year and the council members make about $8,000? a year.

That leaves next years deficit at roughly $3,323,027.17.

Does anyone know what the five year financial forecast projects for future years?

Bill before you get too excited...

There was a discussion not long ago on here about how the council jobs were thankless and much underpaid, as well as something about how the mayor should get $100,000 or much more. I asked when the last time a council member actually resigned because the job was thankless and not because of illness or the pursuit of higher office and did not get any response.

Why plan ahead? Why not wait until we are in a crisis? Then they can say they will cut the most popular service(s) if we do not vote for a huge tax increase and throw in something about how it is FOR THE CHILDREN.

Doug

Bill Call wrote:By this time next year the City will have spent all of its financial reserves and have no authority to borrow additional money. Since the City will not have the cash it needs to fund day to day operations something will have to give.

What would you cut?

How did we reach this point?

We do not need to male a single cut his is what is so crazy.

Put in Savannah's Peninsula, At the entrance to the park, put two very large Gold Coast size condos in a V. So that you drive between them on the way to the bandstand and causeway to the new park.

High end restaurants in both, with viewing towers for residents.

Make them just tall enough that they do not cast shadows to the beach area.

Estimates by those that do not like the project, an additional 300 million in taxable properties, not counting the condos.

This always breaks me up. Cutting is so easy, just numbers on paper. So much easier to cut then create.

Next.


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DougHuntingdon wrote:Why plan ahead? Why not wait until we are in a crisis? Then they can say they will cut the most popular service(s) if we do not vote for a huge tax increase and throw in something about how it is FOR THE CHILDREN.

Doug

It's funny you should say that. Whenever the cost of schools is discussed the school boards last line of defense is something like, "All I can think to do is to stop buying books".

The explosive growth in the cost of government generally leads to to talk of vague efficiencies or reagionalization. It very rarely leads to a discussion about costs.

In today's Plain Dealer Sam Fulwood writes that the recent snowfall illustrates the need for regionalization. His general line of reasoning is that if five cities without any money pooled all of their cash together they would have more money. I don't buy it.

See:

http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindeal ... xml&coll=2

I don't see how making the county responsible for snow removal will save one dime. Do they really think that the area will need fewer trucks or less salt? Do they really think that a larger organization will have less overhead? I guess they do.

Bill Call wrote:

Commodities wrote:I don't see how making the county responsible for snow removal will save one dime. Do they really think that the area will need fewer trucks or less salt? Do they really think that a larger organization will have less overhead? I guess they do.

Bill

As I wander the county talking with various officials and citizens it is amazing how many think that this will save us. The questions that always seems to be missing is; from who at what cost.

Snow removal would save nothing, probably lose more in cost and service than could ever be gained at buying salt together.

The best answer would seem a County Co-op, and to blow it out even larger than normal. Push the cities together in buying commodities in a massive Co-Op. then allow residents to come in and purchase salt, paper, cushmans, etc. at the co-op price?

The cities' cost of business goes down, and the cost of living in the county goes down.

I think that would be one of those win/win things.


FWIW



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oh man, it really pains me to say this, but (gulp) I agree with Jim.

Cuts are rarely a good answer, just the easy way out. Lakewood has tons of vacant properties, plenty of room for expansion or revitalization, etc. build the tax base instead of cutting services.

Dint get me wrong, I still think that someone needs to take a serious look at making sure we're getting our money's worth, but how would cutting back services help attract new businesses or residents?

Another possibility, has anyone looked into the trash tax option that's being done in some other cities? (I think Seattle and Denver are already doing it). As I understand it, it's kind of like a luxury tax, where each residence is entitled to two or three trash cans worth of garbage pickup per week, and residents would pay an extra fee for additional cans

Theoretically, it's a win win, either do more recycling and cut back on your trash output, or pony up more of the cost to dispose of your waste.

just a thought.

I am sure the logistics of what I am going to propose would be incredibly painful but considering the number of empty houses in Lakewood along with the glut of rentals what if there was some sort of public/private partnership that chose a section of the city,maybe a block with the most vacant doubles and bought or swapped the doubles for vacant houses in another part of the city. Therefore leaving a whole empty block available for development;cluster homes,condos,whatever. Thus creating new single family homes with new infastructure and at the same time eliminating rentals that are no longer needed here.

Bret

Don't lie it feels good agreeing with me. Like hanging with the bad kids.

No matter how trash is taken care of outside of the city it is a tax raise.

Here are the facts.

The city needs money, our taxes will never be cut. We either raise taxes, with very tough oversight by the public, maybe an outside auditing group. Or we privatize and send out checks to some company not based in Lakewood.

The residents of Lakewood have tough choices, but they get no tougher than voting for a tax increase or bending over and picking up a piece of trash.

I was at a meeting last night, where I was given a list of things that needed fixing in Lakewood. Basically everything that has been mentioned here. Then they wanted FREE meters, more police, more trash pick-up, cleaner parks, fixed streets, nice signs everywhere, flags, and art. and on and on and on. Oh yeah, lower taxes.

It was insane. Sorry to those reading this that were there.

Right now, we are OK, if we can motivate. Motivate our city, residents, and businesses to take some of the load on themselves. This is a time tax, not a money tax. In business time is money, so maybe both.

If we sit on our asses and wait for the city, we get the waste and slow movement that comes with government. I do not care who is mayor or on council they cannot address most of this. There is no money and a sewer project that has to be done.

Time for us to wake up and smell the coffee.

LEAF Community is a perfect example of residents versus government.


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renting is not a crime

DougHuntingdon wrote:renting is not a crime

What are you talking about?

dl meckes wrote:

DougHuntingdon wrote:renting is not a crime

What are you talking about?

Some people see too many rentals as a bad sign for a community. They then infer that if rentals are a problem then renters are also a problem. Since Doug is a renter he takes offense at the generalization. I don't think it is necessarily true that renters are bad for the community.

Then again I never met Doug so I might be way out on a limb here.

The proper mix of rentals and non rentals, housing quality and retail development should be part of the City's financial projections and goals for the future. Should the City set the tone for growth and have development goals or is a City adrift a good thing?

I like agreeing with Jim.

Seriously I remember when Cleveland was first going through it's tough time. They turned out the lights etc. It seemed like a city in decline. In fact they were managing the decline, much like our city officials sometimes seem want to do.

Then Voinovich came in, turned back on the lights, got business people together and the rebirth of Cleveland came. (It needs another rebirth now - I agree.) It was metaphorical and literal. Lakewood isn't that bad - but we really have to realize that we have something few other cities have in Northern Ohio - Lake front - it is a special commodity. We need to be the success story in Northern Ohio.

The problem is - it is hard to get people to invest in your city when you are cutting and looking like a loser. It is much easier to get people to get excited about your city - when you are acting like you are successful.

That isn't to say that we shouldn't do citisat and save money where we should be saving money and getting rid of deadwood where we can. For example fixing the running urinals. I must say I was happy to see that the plumbers union endorsed our mayor. I was hoping one of his friends could fix the urinal.

Jim, did I see you wrote sewer project? Didn't we just vote last year to take the money out of the sewer project to use it for the general fund? I'll do some research on this - but seems like we had some of that money saved. Didn't we?

Bill Call wrote:

dl meckes wrote:

DougHuntingdon wrote:renting is not a crime

Nothing wrong with rentals, but there is something wrong with too many rentals in a market that clearly does not or most likely will not need them(until arizona runs out of water that is).
The rentals in Lakewood were built to support office workers in downtown cleveland and factory works at places like Union Carbide. Those jobs do not exist anymore nor do the people. Thus,Lakewoods population decline of 20k people since 1970. There are also alot more places to live now than back at the turn of the 20century.
Lakewood needs to change with the times and try and provide what people want and need.