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10/03/2003 Archived Entry: "I NEED TO BRUSH UP ON MY MATH SKILLS"

I NEED TO BRUSH UP ON MY MATH SKILLS

The city is in the planning stage of investing a lot of money in several projects....the fire station, two offices at city hall, the new street east of town, 'fixing up' the golf course club house, an extension of Post Rock water, extension of the city shops, airport hangers ....and I'm wondering...where are we going to find almost a million dollars for these projects? Maybe my math skills are deficient. Maybe they think we don't worry about how we'll pay for this. Every other city is broke and I'm wondering why we aren't. It would be nice to have these improvements, but I'm wondering about them and what it will do to our mill levy. Maybe we have enough saved back from previous years to pay for all of this. That seems very unlikely to me.

Here are the projects and their estimated costs:

Remodling of the city clerk and treasurer's offices estimated at $105,000
City shop addition estimated at $100,000
6 additional fire station bays estimated at $95,000
Pro shop improvements at golf course estimated at $105,000
Airport hanger improvements estimated at $50,000
New street (KDOT $1,300,000) our share $300.000
Post Rock extention estimated at $70.000 to $90,000

The City Council approved the go-ahead to get estimates on the above projects. Individually they haven't yet been approved. The one at the top of my list, is at the bottom of the above list...and that would be to do something about the Post Rock water extension. I'd like to see that resolved.

The "old club house" at the golf course does need something done to it. It was in bad shape 20 years ago.

I don't know why we didn't remodel the city offices when we remodled the city building several years ago. I'm sure someone has the answer to that.

I'm sure we're already committed to the $300,000 portion of the street project. That is a bargain for us and will be an improvement we need.

I haven't sat in on discussions about these projects. I don't have answers and I don't even have very good questions. They are having another city council meeting on Monday to revisit these issues.

If you read what was said at the council meeting in last weeks INDY, I think you'll find that Don Panzer moved to scale back these projects and he could not get a second from any of the other members. It makes me wonder.

We haven't heard about mill levy rates from the school district or the county. If we get these up too high, I'm not sure how many people are going to want to move here just based on the fact this is just a nice place to live. People balk at raising taxes ....or so I've noticed. People look at the tax base before they move. We'll see, won't we?