Lynn newsletter

I don't feel I did justice to Alderman Lynn by picking quotes out of his newsletter. So I will quote whole sections from the newsletter since it isn't on his website. From here on headings and all will be from his newsletter, I just hope it isn't too long.

What About the Budget?
When a new council is seated, one of the first orders of business is to pass a new budget. This is required by state law and we must have a budget certified by March 15. In all honesty the system is not very good. You have many new council members who don't entirely understand the process or the budget and they are trying to learn.
You have often heard me say that our city is not professional. It has no real budgeting process. It does not define priorities. This leaves us open to manipulation by special interests and city employees. This was no exception.
We adopted the initial budget because one council member did his homework and typed up the proposal. Although I appreciate the work, it did not necessarily incorporate the wishes of the council as a whole. It called for cuts in fire and police. Given that about 60% of our budget is public safety this would seem reasonable, but I knew that those cuts would hurt the Fifth Ward. We obviously have a crime problem, and the reduction of police would have hurt us. The loss of one fire unit would have potentially closed a fire house, and could have lowered our fire rating and increased fire insurance premiums. I did not believe this was a good idea.
If you add to this the fact that six council members wanted to reduce taxes and eliminate the storm water fee, this was difficult situation. We did in fact vote in the majority to repeal the storm water fee, but the mayor vetoed it. We did manage to lower it to $1.60 from $2.34. We also lowered the operating levy by 43.5 cents per thousand (your property tax). On the other hand we raised the dbt levy by 77 cents per thousand. Originally the city staff proposed an increase of $1.99 per thousand of assessed value, but we reduced that.
The reason for the increase in the debt levy was due to the last minute spending of the old council. Sadly, the new members of the new council found out how difficult it is to reduce spending once it is in place. The city signed contracts and sold bonds as soon as the old council authorized it so the new concil could do little. (As you know three of us opposed this spending, but lost.) I believe this is another flaw in the system. We had a lame duck council with five people that were not returning. Two other council members joined with them to pass millions of dollars in new spending.

The Freight House Issue
Shortly after the new council was on board, we were asked to vote on purchasing an option on the freight house. This was $15,000 that did nothing but allow us to buy the lease on the freight house. This made no sense given that we were discussing eliminating jobs. Since no one could explain exactly how much we were really going to spend and who was paying for the feasability study, a majority of us vote against this option.
The mayor then called a special meeting to reverse this vote. Five of us walked out and that meant we did not have a quorum. The reason for the walk out was that we knew this would be reversed. Further, it became obvious that the real plan was to get the city to spend another $2.5 million dollars to pay for this project.
I am a supportive of the freight house project, but I do not believe it needs that much funding and we simply cannot afford it. We have already been asked to subsidize too many projects downtown. For instance, we give the $750,000 per year to the Figge. This is a beautiful building and a great addition to downtown, but should the taxpayers susidize it? I don't believe they should. Further, I have repeatedly asked for finacial information on the organizations we are subsidizing. I am told this information is private. I believe if we are subsidizing it, we are in essence stockholders and we deserve to know how these enterprises are doing.