Alderman's Notebook
from ECA newsletters
February 2008
I’m sure that you’ve noticed that crime has stayed in the news. Last summer we had the muggings and now we’re having a spate of burglaries, especially on and around Boucher Avenue. The City recently released the crime statistics from 2007 and, while most categories are down slightly, the overall rate is still high, way too high.
There are some encouraging things happening, however. ECA, through its Public Safety Task Force, has made progress both in getting the Neighborhood Watch program numbers up and in getting streetlights repaired or installed. Jeanne Slawson has done an incredible job and the Watch numbers are now over a 175 persons. Recently, Bob Agee, acting Director of Public Works, walked Eastport with Vic Pascoe and Lee Finney, and me, going over the streetlight list developed by Desiree Bell and her Task Force Committee. Bob assures me that we will be seeing a lot of new lights very soon.
On the State level, Mike Busch has noticed our crime issues and I believe you will soon be hearing about some welcome help from the state under Governor O’Malley’s public safety initiatives. We all hope that these initiatives will lead to a reduction in crime in Ward 8. ECA deserves our appreciation for getting on the crime issue and for making such great progress. Your work has been noticed around the city and in the Mayor’s office. Good work guys!
Still, we need to be mindful that there are still some bad guys out there looking to invade our homes. In watching the e-mail traffic from the “Stop the Gunshots Fired” group, it is easy to discern that we have been lax is protecting ourselves. The two burglars that have been apprehended were done so through the joint efforts of undercover police officers and alert homeowners who called 410 268-4141 and reported suspicious persons and activities. In some instances, owners of homes burglarized had left windows or doors unlocked. We all need to secure our property and turn on lights at night. We must be aware that as the police crack down on the crime around Boucher, the bad guys will roam our streets looking for opportunities.
My final message on crime in this Notebook is that help is on the way—we will solve this problem. Meanwhile, we must all remain vigilant. Secure your property and call in suspicious activity.
Turning to another topic, the Council will soon be taking up the budget.
This year, the budget will be a thorny issue because we must clearly increase significantly our investment in the police force. At the same time, we are facing budget pressures because our revenues are holding steady while our expenses are continuing to rise. Expenses are primarily employment related—salaries, benefits and contract services—but also gas and utilities are going up for the City just as they are for residents. Our primary revenue source is property taxes and that stream has slowed as real estate values have leveled off. Another important source of revenue is transfers from the County and State. The budget problems of those two entities have been much in the news. It will not be a surprise to see those transfers come under pressure, thus adding to our potential revenue woes. I will be reporting more on the budget in my next Notebook message.
Finally, I want to remind you that I will be available at Ahh, Coffee at 11 a.m. the first Saturday of the month to answer your questions and listen to your ideas. I will also choose a topic to expound upon for each meeting as time and interest allow. This month I spoke about the difference between our City structure of government compared to the federal form of government. I enjoyed the meeting and I hope those that attended did as well. I will send out a reminder of the next meeting via blast e-mail. If you are not getting my e-mail blasts and want to do so, please send me your name and contact information at the e-mail address below.
As always you can reach me at 410-295-9743 or EastportRoss@aol.com to discuss these or other issues.
Your Alderman,
Ross Arnet
November 2007
Two important votes are coming up at the City Council meeting of 19 November: the ban on plastic bags and the 2 a.m. liquor licenses. I’m not inclined to vote for either of these ordinances at this point, based on my own analysis and the input I have received from residents.
Like the other council members, I am concerned about the environment and know we need to start doing things to reverse the course of global warming. My son is twenty and I don’t want to stick him and his generation with an irreversible mess. The big question is, What are the correct things to do and how to get them done?
The paper versus plastic issue is very scientifically complex and I’m not sure anyone on the Council is qualified to make these assessments. Thus, we have relied on what articles and information we can get from outside sources. Unfortunately, these often show very different pictures. Some say that plastic is the worst environmental offender. Certainly in terms of indestructible litter it is very bad, but it is the environment not aesthetics that I worry about.
Other articles show that paper, while it does degrade eventually, has the worst environmental footprint. Paper production and recycling uses huge amounts of energy and toxic chemicals. A ban on plastic bags could be driving us to a solution that is environmentally worse than the problem, but who among us knows that for sure.
The articles I find most useful are the ones that say that the right choice is neither plastic nor paper, but instead to use reusable cloth bags.
In my view, the City needs to get its own house in order first, before we start limiting the choices of the electorate. We need to do a much better job of recycling in the commercial zones of the City by providing color-coded recycling bins. We also need to provide reusable cloth bags just as we provide the blue recycling bins for homeowner use.
Council members are working the issue as best we can and my hope is that we will be able to able to come up with something better that the ordinance we have under consideration now.
As for extending the hours of operation for restaurants to 2 a.m., I am unconvinced that this is the right thing to do. The ordinance is offered as a move to make a fair playing field for all establishments, and that seems alright on the surface. But, we know that the two additional hours will be devoted to drinking, not eating. Given that we don’t do a very good job of policing the behaviors at the current 2 a.m. establishments, how can we consider adding more to the list?
During the course of our hearings on this issue, we heard from the Alcohol Beverage Control Board and found that they have no enforcement staff, and they rely on the police to manage the drinking scene. The police are primarily used to stop fights and do not, as a rule, enter the establishments to observe underage and excessive drinking, nor do they follow patrons onto side streets where unsavory activities occur. In any event, given our crime situation and the understaffing of the police force, I don’t feel this is a movement in the right direction. Until we address the enforcement issue, I can’t see making any change at this point.
Finally, the Council will begin its deliberations on the Fiscal 2009 budget with a series of meetings at St. Johns College starting Thursday evening, 15 November, and carrying over to Friday and Saturday, 16 and 17 November. Information on these meetings will be posted on the City website once they are made firm.
As always you can reach me at 410-295- 9743 or EastportRoss@aol.com to discuss these or other issues.
Your Alderman,
Ross Arnett
September 2007
First, congratulations to Eastport and the Civic Association for rising to the occasion during our recent crime scares. The citizen e-mails, reward posters, and the Association’s Safety Task Force have made the point that Eastport is not crime tolerant. I can assure you that in City Hall and police headquarters the message has been heard.
The City Council Public Safety Committee, of which I’m a member, is working with the Mayor and the Annapolis Police Department (APD) to come up with ways we can get the numbers of police officers up to the authorized strength. We are also looking at ways to make policing practices more effective. Community policing, strategic foot patrols, and more technology are a few of the areas we are exploring.
We are making some progress in getting crime down, but the real change is going to take some time. Thirty-seven candidates passed the recent testing for new officers. They must now pass security and background checks and spend ten months in the police academy before they can get on the streets. The Chief has promised that the new officers will start on foot patrols as soon as they arrive on duty.
We have been able to attract some officers from other forces in the area. Unfortunately, we also keep loosing officers as well. So the Council is going to have to help in other ways. The new cameras that businesses have put in place have already helped to capture some crime activity. You may have read about the initiative to change the shift schedules to put more officers on the street and the idea of getting a few more officers out of patrol cars and onto bicycles.
These changes, along with your voices, are letting the bad guys know that they are not welcome in Eastport and Annapolis. Now we need to make sure that we all keep up the good work.
Ross Arnett, Ward 8 Alderman
EastportRoss@aol.com
May 2007
Well, it’s that time of year—budget time. Not a very sexy topic, but oh so important to the City’s well being and to your wallet. I apologize in advance for the amount of numbers sprinkled throughout this discourse. I tried to keep them to a minimum, but some numbers are necessary for context.
At just under $74.3 million, the Mayor has submitted a balanced budget, in that the revenues cover the expenditures. (You can view the proposed fiscal 2008 budget online by going to the City website). This was accomplished only by not funding several expenditures that are sorely needed by the City, but more on that in a bit.
I want to take a little space to address the revenue side of the ledger. Revenues come from two general sources, general funds ($52.2 m) and enterprise funds ($22.1m). The latter are revenues generated by fees we pay directly for such services as water, sewer, parking, docking, transportation, refuse, the market house and stormwater. By law, the fees for these services must cover their expenses. The City has been able to do a good job of keeping these funds in the black with just small positive cash reserves.
The general funds come from taxes ($28.2m), licenses and permits ($2.9m), intergovernmental transfers ($12.7million, with $5.1 coming from State income taxes, $1.9m from State highway taxes, $1.9 m from hotel taxes, $1.2 from police protection, and many smaller transfers) with the remainder coming from a variety of services, fines and earnings. The $28.2 million tax source draws the most attention because of the $25.7 million that comes from our property taxes.
The property tax is generated by applying a cents-per-hundred rate to the assessed value of property. Over the years, the City has been dropping the rate from a high of $1.15 per hundred to the current $.53 per hundred rate. Of course, much of this rate drop has occurred because of the dramatic rise in property values over the past few decades. While a direct comparison is not possible, it should be noted that our tax rate is the lowest of any municipality in Maryland by a considerable margin, and that includes many cities, such as Rockville, in expensive real estate areas. I will return to this topic towards the end of this discussion. By the way, the one-cent per hundred rate equals about $486 thousand in revenue with the current level of property assessments.
Returning to the general fund expenditures, almost 83 percent of the $52.2 million goes to salaries, benefits and contract services, that is, staffing. Most of that amount, about $40 million is set by union contract agreements, both the level and the annual increases. Much of the remainder of the $52.2 million goes to supplies, maintenance and repairs, utilities and debt service. What’s the point? There is an extremely small amount of discretionary wiggle room on the spending side of the budget. Furthermore, the heavy preponderance of our spending is on matters of public safety such as police and fire, but also including public works and inspections. These are the fundamental services provided by a municipality and are not easily cut.
For those few who care to examine the details of the budget looking for cuts, one item that draws attention is the $2.5 million spent for contract services. To be sure, some of this could be reduced a bit, but most is for services where we have no permanent staff. The alternative is to hire staff with the attendant fringe and retirement costs. It’s not clear that these are really budget cuts in the long run.
Another target for cuts is the City’s grant program, which this year totaled $382 thousand. The working mark for the current budget is $500 thousand, which returns funding back up to the fiscal 2006 level. The first thing to note is that we are looking at thousands, not millions of dollars. The current grants selected for funding, out of over 50 applicants, cover 24 wide-ranging programs. The City’s funding is only a small part of the total funding for these programs. In other words, our few dollars of contribution leverage many times more dollars coming from private philanthropic organizations or other governmental entities. This year we are giving priority to grants aimed at helping children and persons needing help in coping with a wide assortment of physical and mental problems. We are funding no new programs this year and are funding one grant for the full amount requested by the applicant.
In putting together the budget, the Mayor looked at millions of dollars of budget “enhancement” requests from each department. From my review, most of these looked not only reasonable, but also, often very desirable. The Environmental Matters Committee reviewed the Public Works enhancement requests and found $1.5 million in additional items they would fund over what the Mayor submitted. It goes like this throughout the budget; many worthy items did not get funded in order to keep the budget spending balanced with revenues.
So the struggle continues to hold the line on expenditures in fiscal 2008, when we have so many items where additional spending is sorely needed.
But here is the big rub. After fiscal 2008, we are headed for some significant budgetary difficulties. In FY 2009, revenues are projected to level off or possibly even to fall while expenditures are forecasted to continue on their current trend. Given the lack of discretionary flexibility to control spending mentioned above, this will put great pressure on the Council to increase the cents-perhundred rate applied to the property assessments possible by a large amount—not a happy picture. Though the revenue picture is forecasted to improve in FY 2010, revenues don’t keep up with expenditures and we will face another potentially large shortfall.
By law the City must pass a balanced budget, so, we are either facing major cuts in City services or substantial property tax increases. The latter may be sustainable by many wealthier residents in Eastport and the City but has the prospect of greatly affecting the demographics of our neighborhood and the City at-large.
Obviously, there are things that need to change, and change quickly, to keep the City on a sound fiscal footing. The Council is working on a range of ideas, mostly involving expenditure cuts, and I encourage all of you to take a look at the budget and to share your ideas with me or any other Council Member. I realize this will sound like the typical bureaucratic response, but the Council is going to invite a “blue ribbon” panel to help us evaluate the situation and develop an array of fixes before the crisis is fully upon us.
In the meantime, crime continues to be a growing concern. There are many different groups working on the problem and each group has its own set of plans to address the problem. The Public Safety Committee, of which I am a member, is planning to hold a meeting of all the different groups in June to see if there is some way to coalesce all the different ideas and energy into one united force to attack the problem. This is still very much a work in progress, with, sadly, very little progress to report.
The Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance (APFO) issue is still working and progress is being made. Mike Christman and I are working with Dave Cordle to get a package together that addresses, in the City code, the Comprehensive Plan, the Capital Improvement Program and the APFO in a coordinated fashion and following the State Annotated Code (i.e., the State Law) and the guidance from the Maryland Department of Planning. We hope to have our work done this summer and have a Council vote, probably in September. One of the side effects of getting this passed is that the building moratoria will be removed and we can start getting permit fees and taxes from work in suspense, help for our impending budget problems.
There is much more going on, but this is all the room I have for this Notebook report. As always you can reach me at 410-295-9743 or EastportRoss@aol.com to discuss these or other issues.
Your Alderman,
Ross Arnett
March 2007
First, let me say I am honored to serve as Eastport’s Alderman. Now that I have been elected, wow, have I been busy! Turns out, being Alderman is a fulltime job. Though I knew the players and the system in general, it’s the details that make the Alderman’s job so demanding. Josh left me quite a bit of material to read and digest, which is a good thing and I’m glad he left me those materials, but it is a lot to get through. On top of that, to get me up to speed, everyone else in the City is being helpful, and supplying me with background information to review and absorb. Meantime, the legislative agenda is full of many important issues. We have the smoking ban, sprinkling downtown, parking, traffic impact analysis, and the adequate public facilities all in the hopper and under discussion, along with a wide assortment of other important but less urgent ordinances and resolutions.
I have also been working on my campaign issues –
crime, cars, and creeks. The Mayor has appointed
me to the Public Safety Committee, the Economic
Matters Committee, and the Maritime Advisory
Board. These are all good committees and I’m
looking forward to serving on them. The Public
Safety Committee covers both the crime and cars
areas. We are focusing on crime right now and I
will be reporting to you on that issue as things
develop and when they can be disclosed. The
Committee will also be looking at traffic, parking,
pedestrian safety, and bicycle path availability and
safety. I need to learn more about what gets
referred to Economic Matters, but I suspect the
name is self-explanatory, as is the Maritime
Advisory Board.
But I want to attend the meetings of three other committees, the Finance Committee, which works on the next City budget, the Rules Committee, which reviews almost all proposed ordinances before they are taken up by the Council, and the Environmental Matters Committee, which looks at the City’s part in protecting and improving our local water and air. A lot of the basic groundwork and discussion of ordinances gets done in the committees. Attending the committee meetings is the time to influence what gets to the Council Meetings for public discussion and votes.
Having elaborated on the workload, I must say that I am enjoying myself. This is what I ran for and I think together we will be able to make progress for both Ward 8 and the City on all of the aspects of the crime, cars, and creeks issues.
Finally, I am working to get up the EastportRoss blast e-mail system. It’s taking awhile because so many of you have expressed an interest in being included in the blasts. I am entering all of your names along with your e-mail addresses and sending back an e-mail to each of you individually once you are entered into the system. Once it is up I will send out a test blast. If you haven’t gotten the test by the time you read this Newsletter, send me an e-mail at EastportRoss@aol.com with your full name and any other contact information you wish to share, such as phone number(s) and address. I will also be revamping the website, EastportRoss.com with current information and contact resources. Last, I plan to have my first town hall meeting in April, probably at the Fire Hall, so stay tuned for information on that.
As always you can reach me at 410-295-9743 or EastportRoss@aol.com to discuss these or other issues.
Your Alderman,
Ross Arnett
