David Brauer wrote: <snip>
> A significant chunk of city spending is money that's simply not > available > for police, fire and most public works. > <snip> > 44 percent of that half (22 percent overall) goes to park/library > levies. > > That leaves the Minneapolis City Council with about 27 percent of > Tom's > baseline number to use for the police services we've been debating. > <snip> > Of that $336 million, the police spend $90 million (27 percent), Fire > $42 > million (12 percent) and Public Works $37 million (11 percent). > > So police, fire and public works gets half of spending including > operations-related debt - or 64 percent of the General Fund without > that debt. [TB] I think you need to include parks and libraries in. First all city levies are set by the same board, the Board of Estimate and Taxation. BET includes representatives of the Council, Park Board, Library Board plus 4 (I recall its 4) elected by the voters. Second, the Council and Mayor have some influence on the Park and Library budgets. The City is has an announced plan to keep levy increases at 8%, that 8% being the combined levy. We could close the parks and libraries, or the police and fire departments (there are people living in places in MN that don't have fire protection, many of them are islands on lakes up north). I'm rather sure that we won't close any of them, but they are all part of the puzzle and need to be considered. If we aren't going to increase taxes, or if we are going to hold levy increases to 8%, we need to be looking at how efficiently we are using the money collected. Police. How many Police Departments do we need? The University of MN has one, Transit has one, the Park Board has one, the City of Minneapolis has one and we have a County Sheriff's department. They all have a management structure. Is that cost efficient? Probably the worst Minneapolis unit of government at being a steward of public monies is the Park and Recreation Board. Do they have their own Police Department because they want the parking ticket revenue? Can't the same people that write parking tickets in Uptown write them at Lake Calhoun? Where's the petition for the charter amendment to make Parks part of the rest of Minneapolis city government? Terrell Brown Loring Park (btw, most of the cops in Loring Park are city cops) __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree REMINDERS: 1. Think a member has violated the rules? Email the list manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED] before continuing it on the list. 2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. For state and national discussions see: http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html For external forums, see: http://e-democracy.org/mninteract ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
