Bread and circuses was the right characterization of the city commission’s interim budget, since a similar focus on non-essentials over hardcore infrastructure considerations was strengthened and repeated in the “goals” the city commission expects the city manager to achieve over FY2027, which were both approved during their meeting, May 27.
(See Tuesday’s article on the interim budget for fiscal year starting July 1 and ending June 30, 2027: https://sierracountycitizen.org/is-t-or-cs-budget-going-back-to-milking-the-utilities/ )
Since Tuesday, City Manager Gary Whitehead spoke with the Citizen and answered questions that were posed in the article, which will be covered in a later article.
I also received the requested Inspection-of-Public-Records-Act document–the city commissioners’ annual “goals” for Whitehead, which can be found at the end of this article.
The city commission, after passing the interim budget, with little comment, went into closed session.
The agenda correctly stated the subject of the session, “Limited Personnel Matter,” and cited the exemption from the Open Meetings Act that allowed the secrecy, “Pursuant tto 10-15-1(H.2).”
That portion of the OMA states:
(2) limited personnel matters; provided that for purposes of the Open Meetings Act, “limited personnel matters” means the discussion of hiring, promotion, demotion, dismissal, assignment or resignation of or the investigation or consideration of complaints or charges against any individual public employee; provided further that this paragraph is not to be construed as to exempt final actions on personnel from being taken at open public meetings, nor does it preclude an aggrieved public employee from demanding a public hearing. Judicial candidates interviewed by any commission shall have the right to demand an open interview;
“Promotion, demotion,dismissal,” are the key words. They were approving Whitehead’s yearly goals, by which the commissioners will rate his performance.They will give him between one and five points and there are 6 goals, all of them crammed with sub-goals.
The document is dated March 18 and titled “City Manager Goals for Community.” I don’t understand how they came up with such a document without holding a “rolling quorum” via phone, text or email, which would be a violation of the OMA. And why the city commission would want to hide from the public what it deems most important to achieve in the upcoming year is beyond me.
It’s as if they think their job is all PR and no substance. They never debate or discuss anything in public. It’s as if they are arrested in the childhood-development stage of “parallel play,” in which they give individual statements but never interact with each other.
The goals are vague groupings that remain unintegrated tasks that Whitehead is to achieve without reason or allusion to good-government or community benefit. They are lists of Herculean tasks that show a preoccupation with providing more circuses than bread to the people, like children planning a menu of mostly desserts.
It’s as if the city commissioners think we can buy our way to happiness and prosperity, which is referred to as “quality of life” in the goals document. As if new residents, businesses and tourists will come if the Lee Belle Johnson Center is returned to being a spaceport visitors center, if we build a “multicultural center,” if we beautify the golf course and parks, if we build a footbridge across the river and rezone that “transition” area to allow more parks there and if we hold more special events and musical concerts advertised on our two new message boards.
The ambiguity in the title of the goals document is indicative of the city commission’s lack of focus, purpose and understanding of their job: “City Manager Goals for Community.”
The implication is that Whitehead wrote his own goals or that the city commission doesn’t know it is the legislative branch that directs the executive branch. Whitehead is supposed to execute their legislative policies, laws and goals.
“Goals for community?” Is Whitehead supposed to spend his time trying to bring us together? By fixing and building recreational and gathering places and holding special events?
The past is prelude. For 20 years I have studied T or C budgets and audits and listened to city commissioners. We’re always on the verge of getting a spate of jobs and tourists and new residents. Chasing “economic development” and “quality of life” instead of good fiscal management of infrastructure–water, wastewater, solid waste and electric–was and is the preoccupation. Deficit spending in the general fund for the pool, golf course, airport, parks? Who noticed or cared? Did they notice that the deficit was made up from the utilities’ cash, mostly from high electric fees? Nope.
Goal one is illustrative. The water and wastewater facilities’ crisis-level repairs and the state of the city’s water wells are crammed alongside “quality of life” facilities, giving them equal importance and no differentiation.
And how are crisis-level repairs and new recreational facilities and ongoing operations and maintenance and city-staff raises to be paid for–without raising utility fees even more than 5 percent a year, as directed in the goals? Whitehead is to pursue grants and collect utility fees that are in arrears.
Right.
Clearly they still don’t know the basics about city governance and spending. The city budget (just like the city audit) is divided into “government-like activities” and “business-like activities,” the latter also referred to as “enterprise funds.”
Government-like activities–finance, human resources, procurement, streets, police, library, parks, fleet maintenance, planning and zoning and capital projects administration, etc.– are supposed to be funded by property and gross receipts taxes, with regular federal and state grants sharing out state and federal tax money that supplements local-tax revenue.
The city collected a mere $220,000 in property taxes for FY2025, according to its yearly audit, available on the state auditor’s website. We are poor, nearly one-third living in poverty, which is twice the national average, and our property values are correspondingly low. The local property tax rate is higher than the state average, but comports with the national average.But the nearly $4.50-per $1,000 taxable property value doesn’t produce much revenue because the average house value is low–$157,000–and one-third of that–about $52,000–brings the city $234.
The city collected $7.1 million in gross receipts taxes in FY2025. The two together, property tax and GRT, should dictate the general fund’s yearly budget. Sure enough, the interim budget approved by the city commission estimates general fund revenues at $7.2 million. But it estimates expenditures at $9.4 million, or $2.2 million in deficit spending.
Business-like activities, such as water, wastewater, solid waste, electric, golf, airport and pool, should be sustained on their own fees, and those fees should not go to make up for government-like activities.
In my 20 years of observing T or C city commissions, they have not made the distinction between government-like and business-like activities, or acknowledged their neglect and bad management of business-like water, wastewater and electric funds.
We are in the midst of a water and wastewater infrastructure crisis caused by the neglect and lack of fiscal oversight by the city commission. Utility fees and taxes have greatly increased. Yet still consciousness does not come.
The “city manager goals for community” still assume the same number of city staff can tackle ten times–literally–the number of capital projects to address emergency infrastructure repairs while giving equal or more focus to “quality of life” projects and chasing grants to fund them. The goals also ignore a poor tax base and the increasing burden of rising utility fees that hit the poor the hardest. More attention to utility-fee collections–that’s their solution.
Maybe free concerts and the prospect of a new pool will stave off “taxation without representation” protests. The passivity and lack of participation in local government among locals indicates complacency and trust in the city commission. And their willingness to abdicate their civic duty to inform themselves and to be a check on their government–to check, not to trust their representatives.