Archive for August 11th, 2009

You can bet my city councilman will get a letter about this one from me, and if you care about quality of life in the city, you might want to look over this list of cuts and consider chiming in too. I understand funds are limited, but our libraries and pools are critical to quality of life here.

The city council could keep the libraries and pools open for a wopping $1.50 per person per year. I don’t understand why they can’t find the money. Maybe they don’t need a public pool, because they have one at home and/or belong to a country club, and they don’t read books?

Go figure.

From a press release by the city:

The City Manager’s recommendation focuses on sustaining basic core city services with a particular emphasis on public safety with no increase to the property tax rate.

Reduce Services/Workforce

Program/Operational Reductions: $16M

• Suspend third allocation to Housing Trust Fund: $2M
• Reduce Medstar subsidy back to FY08 level: $2M
• Reduce maintenance of medians and eliminate maintenance of right-of-ways: $405,000
• Close Wedgwood Branch and Meadowbrook Branch libraries: $813,194
• Reduce funding to social services and arts nonprofits by 24 percent. Subsidies for grant funding provided to three agencies (The United Way ofTarrant County, the Arts Council of Fort Worth & Tarrant County and the Fort Worth Convention and Visitor’s Bureau), which would allocate funding to various nonprofit organizations: $779,000
• Reduce street and traffic operations and maintenance: $763,628
• Eliminate Parks and Community Services late night programs: $577,041
• Reduce Code Compliance districts from seven to six: $466,320
• Close all city pools except Forest Park for summer 2010: $444,961
• Reduce Illegal Dumping Program: $351,000*
• Close and evaluate future of Day Labor Center operations: $271,462
• Reduce after school programs at all Community Centers: $188,522
• Reduce Graffiti Abatement Program: $134,451
• Close Animal Care and Control Center two days per week: $103,000
• Eliminate summer youth track program and reduce adult sports programs: $47,645

Employee Furlough: $3.9M (represents a 3 percent cut in pay for general employees)**

• Columbus Day, 10/12/09
• Day before Thanksgiving Day, 11/25/09
• Christmas Eve, 12/24/09
• President’s Day, 2/15/10
• Good Friday, 4/2/10
• Friday before Memorial Day, 5/28/10
• Friday before Independence Day, 7/2/10
• Friday before Labor Day, 9/3/10

Workforce Reductions: Roughly $10M***

• Need to reduce workforce by 230
  • 114 filled and 74 vacant:
  • 42 voluntary retirements (city to offer $10,000 incentive for eligible retirees)

Employee Benefits:

• Earmark an increased annual contribution to Employees’ Retirement Fund of 2 percent ($5.4M), but refrain from disbursing the additional funds until a committee can submit proposal to change retirement benefits for new hires (possibly summer of 2010).
• Contribute an additional $5M to the long term liability of Retiree Healthcare Plan and eliminate city-paid benefits to those eligible to retire after FY2020.
• Establish Employee Health Clinic and Fitness Facility on a pilot basis: $1M
• Eliminate tuition reimbursement: $258,000
• Increase employee group health insurance premiums by 12 percent, or an average of 1 percent of employee pay, and eliminate Select Plan from Health Benefits Plan.

Reorganize/Outsource Programs

Outsourcing/Privatization: Cost saving unknown at this time

• Equipment Services Division: Evaluation/Request for Proposals during FY10 with target to outsource some services by October 2010.
• Information Technology Services: Evaluation/Request for Proposals during FY10 with target to outsource some city-wide services by October 2010.
• The Herd: Request for proposal to transfer to the Convention and Visitor’s Bureau.
• Other possibilities: portions of Aviation, Reprographics, City Cable

Organizational Transfers: $3.1M

• Public Events Department > Culture and Tourism Fund: $2.6M
• Capital Projects > Capital Projects Service Fund: $576,000
• Reprographics and City Cable > Community Relations Department
• Emergency Management Office > Fire Department
• Sunset Review > Organizational Analysis Unit
• Directions Home Program > Housing and Economic Development Department
• Aviation Department > Infrastructure Services

Increase Revenues

General Fund Fee Increases: $13M

• Lift the $3.2M cap on mineral ad valorem tax revenue: $6.7M (a portion of which will be used to maintain funding for the Directions Home 10 year homelessness plan)
• Assess payment in lieu of taxes for water and sewer properties: $4.2M
• Municipal Court contract for collection of over-due fines: $1.5M
• Increase various fees related to Parks, Code Compliance, Library, Planning and Development, and other services: $1M

Non-General Fund Fee Increases: $9M

• Water Bill changes beginning January 1, 2010 (for typical residential user): up $2.85 per month.
  • Water fee up 50 cents
  • Wastewater fee up 60 cents
  • Sanitation fee up 75 cents*
  • Stormwater fee up $1
  • Water bill late fee: An additional fee totaling 5 percent of the bill will be added to those delinquent payments (23 days or more after issuance of bill).
• Non-residential stormwater fees will increase an average 27 percent.

Other Cost Savings

• Reduce vehicle purchases by half: $1.5M
• Reduce uniform spending for non-civil service employees: $430,000
• Reduce number of city-paid cell phones/blackberries: $50,000
• Reduce car allowance for executives: $40,000

So you want to be followed by tens of thousands of people on Twitter? There are no guarantees, of course, but  I’ve assessed the potential for this, and I’ve noticed these characteristics of highly successful twitterers.

1) They develop and hone a unique persona.

2) They tweet a lot — at least 20 posts a day, sometimes much more.

3) They talk to others (@ message) constantly. When a new person @messages them, they really try to answer.

4) They use hyperlinks relatively infrequently.

5) They keep it positive, positive, positive.

6) Or they’re a celebrity. If you’re a celebrity, all bets are off.  I follow @DavidLynch, he almost never says anything, I don’t know if he writes his own tweets, but it’s kindof cool to follow him, he doesn’t need to prove himself on twitter, he just has to show up.