The library board wants to know which of three unpalatable choices we want them to make to save money, perhaps to absolve themselves of taking the heat when cuts are made.
The Minneapolis public schools have much higher administrative costs than St. Paul's.
The parks have come under fire for suggesting cuts to wading pools and toilet facilities, and are now looking for other places to cut, while spending large amounts of money on a questionable new headquarters building.
A writer on this list suggested these 3 entities have become entrenched empire builders, and I quite agree. In fact, I'm going to make some quite unpopular statements here.
I think the executives and their armies of assistants in all three organizations are vastly overpaid for what they produce.
The library system appears to have an annual operating budget of about $22 million. Given that they are building a new building, clearly there's a bunch of capital program money not mentioned on their website budget page. The library executive gets paid about $130,000 a year.
The park system has a budget of about $50 million, and the park board wants to raise the salary of the executive from the $112,000 that the current employee gets to $114,288. They argue they can't attract the right people without doing so. Horse hockey.
The school district has a budget of about $676 million and an operating budget of about $462 million -- I'm assuming the difference is capital expense of some sort. The executive got a pay raise from $160,000 to $190,000 on December 18, 2001, but she declined to take it.
The Governor of the state gets paid $120,303, and the state's budget is in the billions. There's some law that limits top government salaries, and I believe our 3 little empire-building fifedoms have all gotten exemptions or are working on getting them for their executives. The city of Minneapolis has one or more exemptions, as well.
Frankly, the argument that such large salaries are needed does not wash. My father managed a $700+ million budget of a large government entity in another state (which shall remain unnamed) for 20 years. His top salary was significantly less than any of these executives get paid -- he never got paid six-figures (100,000+) for the work. However, you could ask anyone, and they would say he did an exemplary job. Today, that entity's budget tops $1 billion (my father retired about 6 years ago).
The Minneapolis public school budget is the only that comes even close in size to my father's institution, and note that the salary was pushing $200,000 in 2001.
The Park Board and the Library are pint-sized operations in comparison.
What about the rest of the administrative structure?
Looking at the Park Board's financials, it appears there is significant overlap and duplication of management at the level just below the superintendent. There are 6 assistants who are paid $94,000 to $96,000, according to the budget, although the budget also lists the superintendent as being $110,000, not $112,000 or $114,000. And those are just salaries -- no overhead or benefits. Each assistant appears to have 1 to 5 directors or managers working for them, typically with salaries in the $75,000 range. The Park Board commissioners are expensed at $10,200 to $11,400 each for the 9 of them.
I don't have equivalent budget information for the schools and library.
While all three entities have good reasons for being independent of the city -- schools are historically independent in this state, the library is usually a county-level operation and the parks were independently chartered (if memory serves) long ago at their start to prevent them from being killed in the cradle -- there is are a lot of problems with the situation, as well.
While cities and counties state-wide are talking about merging and sharing services to save money, we have a separate park police department. Now frankly, I think that's a good thing at the moment, because I can't imagine the Minneapolis police managing the parks. But it's just the easiest example of duplicated services.
However, the really insidious and possibly largest problem is from empire-building (if one has a jaundiced eye) or from scope-creep (if one views it as having no personal motives involved). The results are similar: the edges of each organization creep outward to encompass new and larger roles and services. The City, the Library, the Park and the School don't regulate each other, there is no top-level plan or viewpoint except that provided by the mostly uninformed voters. Sure, these entities talk to each other, now and then, here and there. But there's not much preventing them from duplicating each others' services and roles at the edges of each's territory.
That inefficient duplication just gets bigger every year that the voters do not rein them in. To a certain extent, the voter can be partially excused.
How is she supposed to keep track of all the elected officials and what they do? One elects mayors, council members, park commissioners, library board members, school board members, watershed district board, county board, and more -- all of whom have direct effect on your taxes and the quality of life in your neighborhood. It's not easy keeping up on all of them. Many people probably have no idea just how important those park board and library board people are, especially those who are not home owners, who at least get a tax statement with different line items for each entity's tax assessment.
People on those boards and in those jobs at each of those entites want to keep their jobs, maybe even grow them. So there is constant emotional / psychological pressure to push outward and grow beyond the role the organization was chartered for. Either it's accidental as a result of human nature (scope creep) or it's intentional as a result of greed and/or desire for more power, money or prestige (empire building). But it has happened and continues to happen.
The recent article in the Star Tribune mentioned that one reason MPS had higher expenses than St.Paul schools is the smaller class size, resulting in more buildings (indeed 99 schools versus 67) and more principals, etc. But are the class sizes that much smaller and are there that many more kids that they need 32 (48%) more schools? One can have smaller class sizes with the same number of school buildings by simply having more classrooms in the same building.
I have no idea what the budget is for a 3,000 student high school is, but surely with 99 schools, it can't be any larger than $10 millon, right? ( Total budget of $676 million divided by 99 schools equals $6.8 million per school. ) So going back to my father's salary of less than $100,000 and his budget of $700 million, why on earth are principals being paid $100,000 on average? And how many assistant principals are there in these schools? It seems like a recent article about a primary school in south Minneapolis mentioned at least 2 assistant principals.
Maybe all the new government mandated paparwork really does require all that administrative overhead. But I'd like to see some really good justification and support for it. Otherwise, I'll remain convinced that the school district is wasting my tax dollars on non-instructional or related expenses.
There are many other points I could address (bus system cost -- direct employees costing far more in Minneapolis versus out-sourced services in St. Paul), but this is already lengthy.
To summarize: Ignoring the City itself for the moment, I think the Schools, Libraries and Parks have grown outside their original charters. I think they waste tax revenue on administrative overhead and projects outside of their primary purposes. I think there is significant empire building going on, and an arrogant entitlement mentality among SOME members of the governing boards and top executives.
I believe that others among the management of each entity have mistakenly bought into the very wide-spread but false belief that one has to pay ridiculous sums of money to get quality leadership and management. I question the need to have these entities be as independent from the City government as they presently are. I believe there are significant cost savings that can be realized by getting all 4 entities to stay within their true missions.
Most of all, I believe these 3 entities need to be more forthcoming with their strategies, plans and financial information, and that voters need to be far better informed about what they do and why it costs what it does.
I also believe there are arguments against each of my points. However, without having them set out in clear, factual ways, they hold no water.
The "trust us" or "we know what's best for you" method of keeping us in the dark does not wash. If it's hidden, it's assumed to be self-serving at best, and unethical and illegal at worst. It's not a democracy unless the operation of government is transparent and open. (And yes, I think the media is falling flat on its face in upholding its responsibility to keep government transparent and open.)
As someone else mentioned, it's the kind of frustration felt when seeing what looks like waste and mismanagement of tax dollars that drives people to become Republicans and tax slashers -- to the detriment of our whole society. In other words, it behooves all those in control at entities like the Parks, Schools and Libraries to be forthcoming and earn the public's trust, because otherwise, they will be contributing to the general deterioration of our society via knee-jerk tax cuts and public distrust.
Chris Johnson Fulton
TEMPORARY REMINDER: 1. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. 2. If you don't like what's being discussed here, don't complain - change the subject (Mpls-specific, of course.)
________________________________
Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
