The upcoming election is not, as our city officials claim, about whether our community supports our police department. The facts below show there is ample money for a new police station – without a tax increase – if only our city officials spend our money more wisely.
Our city council recommends we citizens approve two tax increases: City property taxes would more than double (from 5 to 10.4 mills), and city sales taxes would increase 18.3 percent (from 3 to 3.55 percent). These increases would generate new revenue of up to $8.7 million in 2019. However, our officials neglect to tell us that these tax increases, over the next 25 years, will raise a minimum of $217.9 million – and potentially up to $317 million. Nor have they explained how they would spend this enormous new sum – other than $17 million on a new police station and additional (unspecified) sums to do more street maintenance.
Our city officials say they are committed to “minimize the cost of government” and to spend our tax dollars “efficiently.” One way to assess whether this claim is accurate is to compare Durango with a comparable town. Montrose is such a town. It is of similar size; it is also a county seat. It is a desirable place to live, and a sizable portion of its economy is based on tourism – just like Durango.
Notably, Montrose officials have 44 percent less revenue to spend each year than our officials ($45.4 vs. $80.4 million). To put this in perspective, Montrose officials are spending this year $2,353 per resident, while our officials are spending $4,460 per resident. This sizable difference is especially perplexing when one considers that Montrose is spending this year:
Nearly three times more than what Durango is spending on street maintenance ($5 vs. $1.6 million);Nearly twice the sum on capital improvements ($18.2 vs. $10.8 million);andOnly a tiny fraction for debt service (principal and interest) because Montrose’s debt is only 13.5 percent the size of Durango’s debt ($12.3 vs. $90.8 million).And, while our officials want to increase our city property taxes by 108%, Montrose imposes no property taxes at all.
One reason for this vast disparity is that Montrose has less than half the employees than Durango (161 vs. 354). This means that Montrose’s labor costs are over 55 percent lower than Durango’s labor costs ($14.2 vs. 31.9 million) – even though Montrose has 840 more citizens than Durango.
So, fellow citizens, whose officials – Durango’s or Montrose’s – are more “efficient” in spending their citizens’ money and more committed to “minimizing the cost of government?”
It is also useful to compare our city’s spending today with what it spent five years ago. In 2013, our city had revenues of $53.7 million; this year, it is enjoying revenues of $82.4 million – an increase of 53.4 percent. Yet, over this same five-year period, our population grew by only 5.2 percent. In other words, the city’s revenue has increased at a rate 10 times higher than our growth in population.
Here are several examples of the exorbitant growth of our city government over the past five years:
The Durango City Council increased its and the city manager’s budgets by 65.2 percent (from $566,593 to $935,965);The number of total employees has jumped by 18.3 percent (from 299 to 354); andTotal personnel costs have jumped by 29.7 percent (from $24.6 to $31.9 million).Very few of we citizens have seen our income rise by over 50 percent during the last five years. How can our council possibly justify increasing city revenues by 53.4 percent when our population has grown by only 5.2 percent?
One point is clear from the above. Durango has plenty of money to build a new police station – without a tax increase. All our council has to do is what it claims it does: spend our money “efficiently” and “minimize the cost of government.” If our city cut spending by just 10 percent, we could pay in full for a new police station in less than two and a half years.
Jeff Bork was a telecom lawyer for more than three decades. He is now a retired resident of Durango. Reach him at bork@colorado.net
