Failing miserably

Posted by Mark Chapman on April 19th, 2010 at 1:06 pm

Edi­tor,

Our local eco­nomic depres­sion is now nearly five years old. The con­struc­tion indus­try remains dead in its’ tracks, with the price of resale homes sub­stan­tially below the cost of con­struc­tion. Local unem­ploy­ment hov­ers at nearly 12 per­cent, which trans­lates into a real unem­ploy­ment rate of nearly 25 per­cent. Real estate val­ues have plum­meted. Prop­erty own­ers are los­ing or walk­ing from their prop­er­ties. Sales are up due to price reduc­tions, but we have another wave of fore­clo­sures com­ing. We have empty homes all over the area and the rental rates can’t gen­er­ate enough rev­enue to cover the annual over­head of a property.

Local busi­nesses are cut­ting staff, reduc­ing pay rates and cut­ting ben­e­fits dras­ti­cally. But year after year we open our prop­erty tax bill and see it nearly iden­ti­cal to the prior year. Some county lead­ers “talk the talk”, but rely on staff to get things done. Staff is trim­ming with a scalpel when they should be ampu­tat­ing with a chain­saw. The results are woe­fully inad­e­quate and the result is our coun­ties are fail­ing us mis­er­ably — includ­ing the Sher­iffs Depart­ments, School Boards and Fire Districts.

The holy grail, of course, is the cost of per­son­nel. I don’t want to see some­one lose their job or have their wages and ben­e­fits reduced any more than any­body else, but our local lead­ers can no longer hide their heads in the sand and expect us to pay the bills for their poor per­for­mance. The pri­vate sec­tor has slashed their expenses to meet a decline in rev­enues. Those that didn’t are already out of busi­ness. Coun­ties need to react in the the same man­ner, and this can’t be done with­out reduc­ing staff, pay rates and ben­e­fits. We hear of posi­tions being cut in small num­bers, then read in the fine print that most of the cuts were vacant posi­tions anyway.

Noth­ing should be sacred — not the num­ber of com­mis­sion­ers, depart­ment heads, man­agers, super­vi­sors, employ­ment con­tracts nor labor agree­ments. Busi­nesses have been doing just this for years now through rene­go­ti­a­tions, ter­mi­na­tions, reduc­tions and adjust­ments. If they can’t man­age to get this done behind closed doors then they need to do it in pub­lic. We as tax­pay­ers will be there to help and sup­port them!

All we’ve seen to date are minor cuts, pro­tec­tion­ism and a major atti­tude that this is all the tax­pay­ers’ fault. One of the first rounds of cuts were to library hours, trans­porta­tion, park hours, park main­te­nance and even park clos­ings. Pun­ish those tax­pay­ers so they’ll be happy to pay more taxes! We hear that police bud­gets can’t make major cuts or our lives will be in dan­ger! We hear that schools can’t make major cuts or our kids won’t go to col­lege or get a job! Can’t cut fire/EMS or your house will burn down or we can’t save your life!

We have Build­ing Ser­vices on patrol, hunt­ing for code vio­la­tions and work done years ago with­out per­mits — under the mask of safety. The real rea­son is that staff needs to gen­er­ate rev­enue from fines, per­mit­ting after the fact, or other pun­ish­ment — or else lose their job. I’m very sorry, but if these folks have the time to do this then there isn’t enough work for them any­way. This isn’t rocket sci­ence, but busi­ness com­mon sense.

Just today I read about an oper­a­tion near a local school where our Sheriff’s deputies hid their cars, wait­ing for school to let out and then wrote numer­ous $60 tick­ets to 13-year-olds for not wear­ing hel­mets. Give us a break — this is way off the deep end and teach­ing kids that they live in a police state. Bad enough we’ve got rov­ing road­blocks and speed traps to raise money in the name of safety, but now we’re going to ambush our kids to gen­er­ate rev­enue from the par­ents, when this should instead be seen as an oppor­tu­nity to edu­cate our chil­dren as a pubic ser­vice like they should.

When pri­vate enter­prise treats their cus­tomers the way we’re being treated, they go out of busi­ness. Start treat­ing us like cus­tomers so that we can all stay in busi­ness. After all, we are pay­ing your pay­checks, so thank us for it — rather than look­ing for new ways to pun­ish us.

I fully intend to bring my tax bills for the past five years to the polls in each future elec­tion, and will vote after not­ing the drop in value ver­sus the drop in total tax. I hope that every­one does the same. If our cur­rent offi­cials don’t do their job, their replace­ments might. Only then can we can make our area an attrac­tive and desir­able place to live, which will enable our local econ­omy to recover and thrive once again.

Dave Campo

Engle­wood

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