Every citizen is going to have to put themselves in the shoes of their LOCAL elected governing bodies. Here’s the deal as I slip into those combat boots:
“Dear Citizen:
I was elected to listen to your needs and to your wants. You come before this governing body asking for things at every council meeting. We evaluate those requests. We know about most of them because we walk and drive the community. We attend luncheons and all kinds of meetings. We talk to you on the phone. We ask you for advice, such as priorities and urgency. We can’t do everything you ask, but we would if we could. We try our best.
We know that you are intelligent and don’t truly think for a minute that there is a free lunch. We’d give services and utilities away for free if that were possible, but no responsible person would ever entertain that foolish notion. None of us are fools. And name one service we provide that was dreamed up only by local elected officials. Just about everything we do is because 1) you asked for it; or 2) because the state or federal government imposed it on us.
Now comes state government that thinks they know you better than we do. But wait. I’m not going down that road. To bash the Lege and the Gov is not constructive. You know what? Let’s just deal with what we are handed. You, the citizens, and we, the council. Don’t make any mistake about it. We’ve been handcuffed by the state without regard to our pledge to serve you.
And here’s a glimpse of the future. It is highly likely that we may have to hold an election every year for you to approve to pay what you have asked for us to provide. Representative government has been partially tossed out the window. That’s okay. We will put your wants and needs into the budget, but you will likely have to give direct approval as a separate step.
That’s the deal now. Let’s be honest. Holding an election each year is not all that expensive in the grand scheme of things. It’s simply a nuisance and will cause fatigue. Gird up! We didn’t ask for this, but it’s the law of the land. And we will follow the law.
We hope that part of the election routine will be coupled so that capital project approval will be married to the cost of operations. That has actually always been implied. You don’t expect us or anyone else to build a fire station, recreation center, ball fields or swimming pools and then expect the staffing, equipment and programming that goes inside to not cost something, right?
Did you know that the Operating & Mainteance costs, at least over time, are about 2-pennies for every 1-penny of the O&M tax rate? If permitted, we will start including this dual-approval on the ballots: “Approval for $____________ in Project X along with the companion O&M Costs that will mostly be paid for out of Ad Valorem Taxes.”
We may even have to go back and re-vote for some past project approvals or at least to explicitly approve the O&M that you implicitly approved into past bond elections.
The weird part of this onerous requirement on us and you is that we may be asking you to vote annually just because your values went up. We fully understand that our property tax revenues are the results of both taxable values and tax rates. Thanks to the new legal constraints, we may be asking for voter approval only because inflation has outpaced our property tax values. It’s complicated. We’re all for disclosure and being fair, but our Truth-In-Taxation laws are gravitating toward IRS-like hoops when all we are trying to do is to pay for the services you requested.
What we do know is that we won’t stop listening to your needs and wants. If you are willing to pay for these things, we will service your requests. It just might have to be in two steps.
We ask for your patience. We wouldn’t wish this imposition on anyone in the business of helping citizens. However, we are confident that you can wear our shoes at two critical times in our future: 1) when you ask for new services or for us to continue existing services that meet the needs of our community; and 2) be there for the companion decision to pay for those services.
No matter who is wearing the shoes, you can’t have one without the other.
Thank you!
Your Local Elected Official”
Let's Talk About It, Lewis! 