Well, I got paid again last month so I thought I should write out a little of what's been going on.  This month I'll talk about the dichotomy of cats and trailers, the difference in my in audience perception of the Council Presiding Officer and my performance as the Presiding officer. Why I'm glad to see both community blogs and letters to the editor.  I also think I should outline what information I think needs to be presented for the tax levy discussion and finally I could fill pages with frequently asked question so lets see how the article fills out. 


 
I'm sure I'll regret this but I'm posting a first draft of this article.  I'll edit later but today I decided to play tennis with Thomas and to stuff eggs for the church's Easter Egg hunt instead editing.  Since I conceived the article a week ago I thought I should get out this version today.  My apologies.
 
The Dichotomy of Cats and Trailers
 
This month started with a call from a resident that lives between Fishburg and Powell roads.  He wanted to talk about all the stray cats in the neighborhood and he inquired about what could be done to get people in his neighborhood to clean up their properties better.  That actually wasn't the first time I had talked about cats this month.  The day prior I was talking with a next door neighbor and we were talking about the herd of stray cats that had taken over the storm sewer on my street.  These are obviously feral cats.  One morning when I was out getting wood I startled one of them and this cat was so afraid that it ran back and forth slamming itself head first into both sides of the chain link fence at least six times before it got the courage to run past me through the open gate.  The good part of having the cats there is it appears they pushed the family of raccoons that used to live in that storm drain out of the neighborhood.  Now my trash doesn't get torn up when my kids "forget" to put the lid on the garbage can.  The neighbor I was talking with was concerned because we actually did have at least seven or eight cats going in and out of that sewer.  He also mentioned that he believed one of the other neighbors on the street was feeding them.   
 
Not more than a week later I was talking with a friend and he started telling me about his run in with the Huber Heights police.  I had no idea but my friend has actually been involved for years in animal rescue.  At the beginning of winter he approached a business  because he saw that there were some stray cats living behind that business.  He asked the owner if it was alright to take care of the cats and the business owner said he didn't mind.  So my friend put out cat houses in the woods and was feeding them throughout the winter.  Not to long ago the city was out cleaning drainage ditches on the property.  When my friend saw the city workeers he stopped to make sure the cat houses wouldn't be destroyed.  Wrapping up this story, turns out the property was not owned by the business he asked permission from and the real owners were unaware of his efforts. 
 
Believe it or not, last night I was talking with the host of a birthday party my son went to and I reached down to pet their cat.  The host told me to be careful because he was in a lot of pain because he was attacked a few days ago by feral cats.  This is especially tragic because for the past few months this family had been setting traps and catching feral cats then turning them over to shelters.  This family has turned so many in that her husband has gotten the feeling from the shelter workers that he is no longer welcome there.   
 
It's surprising that I've had so many unrelated discussions this month about cats.  It's not so surprising that I've had a lot of feedback about property maintenance. I still wanted to mention this because I've gotten both a full deck of pictures from an anonymous group of concerned citizens that shows their examples of people having improper upkeep / junk / vehicles in their yards.  I've also had another good friend call about his being continually being cited by the zoning officer.  Though this month there were only a couple people that approached me about yard up keep, this is a subject someone has talked with me about one way or another every month. 
 
So what do I think about cats and stray animals in general?  I didn't like the raccoons in the storm sewer and I prefer the cats.  However, I think that animal control should at least be willing and able to take the animals if someone catches them and brings them to them.  This goes for cats, raccoons, opossums, etc.  This is something I would be willing to sponsor before council and staff.  For nuisance animals that are getting into and destroying property I would like to see animal control be even more proactive and remove them.  I'd be interested in seeing the cost analysis on this.  By the way I don't believe the city has an animal control department. 
 
For property issues, I think our current ordinances match my values.  On the other hand, I believe, in my front yard, I should be doing a better job trimming my hedges and edging.  In the back yard, the roof over my firewood probably isn't in code and its on my schedule to knock it down and set it out to the trash.  Hopefully I do it before the zoning department comes over and writes me up. 
 
Presiding Officer  
 
When I was an observer that went to committee meetings and council meetings, whenever I sat in the audience of council meetings I always thought it would be better if during the "discussion" portion of the legislation more of the "opposing view" were presented.  I thought this then because it shows the public that there was contemplation and give and take that occurred to get to the place where the legislation was ready to be voted on.  While in the audience I thought that if I ever got to be presiding officer this is something I definitely would make sure happened.  I've been presiding officer for three months now and after this past meeting I thought to myself that I haven't really done that all to well yet.  Not only that, I  was also thinking that this is much less important than making sure the committee meetings not only have better discussions but also that those discussions are recorded better.  There are too many instances where the minutes say "and after discussion" when in fact that discussion should be recorded so when we need to review a subject we can look to the minutes as a reference to previous discussions.  
 
I was glad to see that the Power Point presentation about the new electronic billboard is included in the minutes for the March 18, 2014 Administration Committee meeting.  I'll have to check but I don't believe this has been standard practice in years past.  The next improvement is to make the minutes searchable.  Right now when you go into the Meeting Information and Audio Visual page and search you will never get the minutes as a result because those are scanned as .pdf with all the pages pictures.  This is the most important page on the city's website but it can be even more useful if the minutes were searchable. 
 
It is important that there be good official records in place because I want to see more city residents talk and discuss city business.  In order to do this intellectually the city must give the residents a strong base of information to start the discussion.  
 
Letters to the Editor and Blogs
 
This week's Huber Heights Courier had a couple of letters to the editor talking about the author's perception of how I've been doing these first three months.  I am aware of and often chime in to the Brick City Watchdog webpage and the EverythingHuberHeights Facebook page because they often discuss city politics.  I'm glad to see all these inputs because it means people in the city are starting to engage with their neighbors about local politics.  On one hand I wish the tone wasn't so attacking and have said so both publically and privately, on the other hand I brought up many of the same issues over the past three years on my website and hadn't gotten nearly the same following the attacking venue's appear to generate.  I know I'm happy that at least the subjects are being discussed but I also have to say that I like the members of council and would hope that when they chose to also participate in these forums they would get a lot more respect than what I've seen.    
 
I personally would like to see more people attend the Huber Heights Democratic Club meetings (they occur the second Tuesday of the month at the police station community room - Tuesday April 8th Carl Keith the Montgomery County Auditor will give a presentation).  And I would like to see more people attend the Huber Heights Liberty Group meetings.  They normally meet 2 Mondays a month in the back room of Frickers.
 
On that same theme I've been hoping to get more invitations from Home Owner associations to attend their annual or bi-annual meetings.  I try and attend the Huber Heights Chamber of Commerce events.  I'm kind of surprised the local union leadership hasn't invited me to talk with them or attend a union meeting.  Though, I was proud to meet Mike Noll the President of the Fraternal Order of Police 161 and participate in their Cops and Kids Christmas event at Meijer this past December. 
 
What must the city do to change my mind about the City Income Tax Levy
 
If the vote were held today of course I would vote no.  That doesn't mean that the city doesn't need additional revenue.  It just means that to me, council hasn't done a good job explaining the appropriate details that drive the need.  Council hasn't presented anything that resembles an appropriate budget projection for next year much less a five year plan.  So one of the first things that needs to be done is show at least a five year projection.
 
One of the examples I give involves the Music Center.  What are the budget numbers the city is using for the operation of this complex?  You will hear council members tell the public unofficially they expect after a couple years the Music Center will be making $400,000 a year in profit.  Is the city using this number to help calculate how high the income tax levy needs to be?  In fact, it is pretty well accepted that the operation will cost the city $200,000 to $ 300,000 the first couple of years.  That is as much as a $700,000 swing in how much the Music Center operations will effect the General Fund.  This equates to about 1/3 of what council plans to ask for in the income tax levy.  So the question is why would we need a levy that raises $2.3 million a year for 10 years when in 3 years the cost associated with the Music Center will decrease by $700,000?
 
How about Police and Fire services?  Is it really realistic to ask for a levy that does no more than maintain the same as we have today?  I don't think it is realistic to believe we won't have an increase in salaries for the next ten years.  Especially, since we all know that there has to be additional fire services available for the north side of the city.  Even if we don't ask for the money to pay for those now, we should have a plan that states when we believe we will be adding that fire station, how much money it will take to run and the way we think that money will be generated.   That way if it turns out it will take an additional levy to pay for that plan, people know about it now and are not be surprised by it then. 
 
Beyond the budget itself it is important that we examine the impact of the projects and demographics already in place.  For instance has anyone calculated the per person cost of our police and fire services?  Do we know the cost per person of police and fire services for retirees that live south of I-70 and do we know about how much the contribute to paying for those services?  How about the people that live in Carriage Trails?  We know that they basically don't contribute anything through their property tax, do we know if they contribute enough through income tax to make up the difference?  If the majority of them are active duty military or work in Dayton obviously they don't.   If the majority of them are civilians that work on base or doctors that work in Beavercreek they probably contribute more than most of the rest of the city.  I'd like to see an analysis on how renters contribute.  I've heard a lot of people say we should get rid of renters because they don't pay property tax.  ????  This statement bothers me of course because unless the property is in a TIF district or owned by the government there is a property tax associated with the apartment or house and it is being paid. It would be good if the city produced an analysis showing how this contribution compares to other residents. 
 
We also need a city produced explanation of how TIF districts work.  TIF districts can be a useful tool and they can also be misused.  A well produced explanation should give more citizens an idea of which is which for any given situation.  It would also be useful to see case studies for individual properties within a TIF.  The new Good Sports complex, Wal-mart and the new Family Dollar would be a good candidates for case studies. 

Last year we significantly reduced the strain on the General fund by allocating portions of the salaries for positions like finance director and City Manager to different funds and making sure that projects that could be charged to funds with  good cash reserves weren't being paid through the General fund.  How much of an effect will these changes have in future years?
 
I'm sure that I believe that these are all necessary in order for me to  make an informed decision about the tax levy.  So it is my intention to do as many of these calculations as a single individual with 5 kids, a full time job and a love for being outdoors can do before November .  When I get these calculations to a place that I believe they are useful I will of course share them.  I just think it is a shame that council hasn't tasked staff to produce this kind of information in a manner so that most of the residents can understand and debate the issues.  I know we would have been much better off spending these last three months getting staff to prepare a legitimate five year budget projection instead of pre-maturely trying to sell the idea that police and fire services are bankrupting the city.   It may turn out that the cost of police and fire services is the primary cause of the deficit.  However, I don't think it is possible to get enough people in the city to believe it and vote for a tax levy if the city doesn't produce a budget or analysis on the other things that affect spending and revenue. 

I believe I'll have to stop for now.   I'll have to add the citizen questions later.