Bodley reporting Sept. 13, 2011, on the Anoka County Board passing next year's budget:
According to Cevin Petersen, division manager for finance and central services, the county’s tax share on an average value homestead property in the county, $176,000, will be $24.20 less than 2011.
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[...] “We had more than 2,200 foreclosures last year and more than 1,300 already this year,” Sivarajah said.
“If there are 10 homes in a block and 12 blocks in a mile, the line of homes would stretch from Anoka to Centerville.”
[...] “Overall, Anoka County is committed to keeping taxes among the lowest in the state while maximizing our assets of sound management, a diverse tax base, low debt burden and healthy reserves,” she said.
County Commissioner Jim Kordiak was not enthusiastic about the budget, he said.
“It was a very difficult budget, but I understand we are in very difficult times,” Kordiak said. “I get it.”
County Commissioner Dan Erhart was the lone commissioner to vote against the budget and preliminary levy.
In his view the budget was “draconian” and “devastating” with its cuts and did not adequately provide the services that the county needs to have in place, Erhart said.
All this budget does is “cut, cut, cut,” he said.
But County Commissioner Matt Look called Erhart’s “draconian” comment about the budget “misleading.”
“We need to cut out the wants and focus on the needs,” Look said.
[emphasis added]
Demagoguing over a twenty-five buck cut in taxes?
With all that foreclosure hemorrhaging, and the Rhonda crying towel out over it -- offer a band-aid?
Give me a break.
Beyond that, I wonder what Mr. Wants-Needs has to say about his pack of profligate pals, Darren of Landform, and Mike in the legislature in hard times with four million state tax dollars earmarked this budget year for a Ramsey rail stop, (a "want" surely, not a "need"), along with the GOP gang-of-four decision-making council majority in Ramsey who appear uninterested in keeping Darren's unneeded wants in check -- that being mayor, Elvig, Wise and McGlone.
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Any mutt knows simple wisdom.
_________________UPDATE_______________
HometownSource.com reports:
Anoka County Rail Authority adopts lowest levy in 10 years
The Anoka County Regional Rail Authority (ACRRA) has adopted a proposed 2012 property tax levy of $2.248 million, a 65 percent decrease from the 2011 levy. The 2012 levy continues a trend of necessary reductions.
It is the lowest regional rail levy since 2002.
“In considering wants vs. needs in drafting this budget, we kept the stark reality of the current economy front and center,” said Anoka County Commissioner Matt Look, chair of the Rail Authority. “The new leadership of the Rail Authority takes seriously the responsibility of budgeting only for our current commitments, and eliminating unnecessary planning and spending.”
[...]
On the face of things it seems good news, but there is a context. Before this step, the unneeded Ramsey Northstar stop was pushed through, ignoring the better option of putting a rail stop at the Foley Park and Ride where a number of express downtown bus runs could have been eliminated by shifting and consolidating substantial existing ridership from bus to rail. It would have increased ridership on the Northstar, and reduced bus labor and capital costs while reducing diesel exhaust pollution from the numerous buses. It was a change that made sense. Unlike the Ramsey thing, (Look's want vs. a real need).
With a Ramsey rail stop a single cash-losing subsidized bus running for a handful of riders is all that is eliminated vs. multiple efficiencies via a Foley change.
Go figure that as anything but politics. And not good for Ramsey. Ongoing Ramsey capital debt-service costs will, over time, dwarf this one interim budget change. And a part of that debt service cost has been shifted to taxpayers statewide, given that a four-million subsidy was pushed through the legislature with the SD 48 senator whining about any budget without "structural change." Go figure a sincerity index for that conduct.
So, Look has boosted the costly Ramsey stop, at its subsidization cost to taxpayers since it is built solely out of tax money, and by interim single-year cutting of a county rail budget the worthwhile stop at Foley Park and Ride appears less likely to be built soon, if at all. It has a miasma of pure politics, with demagoguery over the single-year budget ploy to boot.
Good government goes beyond popularity-poll posturing [P3] and reaches instead to substance, soundness and quality. Any sane cost-benefit analysis would have suggested far more benefit from a Foley rail stop.