Life22

Day 13,513 - Budget Passes with Only 6%.mp3
Transcript
00:00:12 Kevin
Hey, gang, Kevin here. Life 22.
00:00:16 Kevin
And.
00:00:17 Kevin
I am exhausted, I am exhausted.
00:00:21 Kevin
You were just like.
00:00:24 Kevin
Not wake up because you're just so tired. Yeah, I don't know what the Hell's going around, but it is. It knocked me on my ****.
00:00:33 Kevin
So sorry, we didn't have a show for last two days.
00:00:37 Kevin
UM.
00:00:39 Kevin
But here we're back. As you can see, I'm still a little still a little groggy, but backing at it. So what I've got for you folks today is a brief update, and then we might delve into Tuesday night's Council meeting. I know a lot of you were waiting for that one, and we still probably should review.
00:00:59 Kevin
Council meeting from 2 weeks ago to a side by side.
00:01:07 Kevin
I don't.
00:01:08 Kevin
I don't like this camera view. I'll have to change it. I listened and listened to a viewer and he insisted that.
00:01:17 Kevin
It was the better thing to do, but now, like I'm, I've got my eyes turned down to you so.
00:01:24 Kevin
Regardless, so we've.
00:01:26 Kevin
Got.
00:01:27 Kevin
Yeah, we've got.
00:01:30 Kevin
We got.
00:01:32 Kevin
Alderman Sonia McCall for Ward 4. She's the incumbent. She's coming on tomorrow evening and they had the council meeting on Tuesday. The budget just passed.
00:01:47 Kevin
Boy, I'm trying to think ohh and then we have a special guest for Saturday morning, which is yours. Truly's birthday. And I know all of you guys like sitting up like little kids on Christmas morning. Being like when is ohh boy? It's my.
00:02:00 Kevin
Friend Kevin's.
00:02:01 Kevin
Birthday and you all go nuts over it, right? So that's so I figured I would share my treat with you guys by having a guest on the show.
00:02:09 Kevin
And.
00:02:11 Kevin
And give you some insightful information. So with that said.
00:02:16 Kevin
I'm trying to recall the Council meeting.
00:02:20 Kevin
UM.
00:02:23 Kevin
So.
00:02:26 Kevin
Yeah, it it. It wasn't horribly eventful.
00:02:30 Kevin
I I enjoyed.
00:02:33 Kevin
For surviving a council meeting, putting the especially if you know the public comment is going to be super long, like changing the and then you there's things that you need to have done, like pass the budget and things like that before all the Alderman disappear out of town. Because I believe you need a supermajority, which I believe is 5.
00:02:53 Kevin
Of the seven members, you can't just have a simple majority, which is 4 of the seven members and.
00:03:01 Kevin
I mean, everyone was present there that night, but you never know when someone's not gonna be present. I believe you know, I think it was mentioned that two or three of them are going on vacation. Like.
00:03:12 Kevin
You know the next day and then there is going to be some flowing into this week. I believe this was the vast last available time we could catch Alderman McCall before she went on vacation. So it was one of those. Hey, let's get it in before you leave. Kind of thing. So it's.
00:03:30 Kevin
It is what it is but.
00:03:32 Kevin
So I love how they they did. They brought that up and they brought up the, the, the kind of like the PR to kind of explain to the masses what you know, the Common Council's position is on this. And I think this is a good.
00:03:48 Kevin
This is a good topic to stick on. I suppose that there is no free speech.
00:03:54 Kevin
Like there is free speech at a Council meeting, it is open to the public, but it is so that you can watch and observe governments.
00:04:03 Kevin
Like.
00:04:04 Kevin
You can watch your Alderman see like ohh wow. He's so you know he or she is so strong and talks about their points. So you know, so.
00:04:13 Kevin
So if ever, as you can tell, I'm still a lot of it. Speak with ferocity or, you know, compassion or or or maybe they're, you know, curled up in the corner because public speaking just intimidates them. They're, like, really good on paper, but like in public, they're just like, they curl up.
00:04:33 Kevin
There's all those different types of things that you get to see by going to the meetings. You get to see elected officials as a whole, how your city government is run. It just gives you transparency that in and of itself is what people are looking for. But for people to sit there and be like.
00:04:52 Kevin
All it's anti free speech to not have comment at the the Council meeting it's like.
00:04:57 Kevin
No, because you can speak freely anywhere. You can hold a protest Uptown like.
00:05:06 Kevin
There's all these different things that you can do that that are free speech, that it does not have to be incorporated into a Council meeting. The school board had rescinded it for a while, and then they went, you know, they went offline with it. And then they brought it back. And really, they should have just, they could have just abolished it.
00:05:26 Kevin
And a lot of people talked about that. I mean, the Common Council could do the same thing. They could abolish public comment because you can always write your Alderman. You can always call text.
00:05:39 Kevin
Show up in person to meet your Alderman to the the mayor's office. Whoever you can. You can do all those things. You don't have to have a public comment, so I I do like.
00:05:50 Kevin
There's no right to public comment. It is just a.
00:05:55 Kevin
Like.
00:05:58 Kevin
An offering that the Common Council offers to the public, it like it, interrupts their meeting like cause their meeting is to get city business done. Your comments tip is a lot of people's comments they have to do with city business, but they're not official city business. They're just like recommendations, comments, like criticisms, appreciation.
00:06:19 Kevin
Just a a bunch of little things. So.
00:06:24 Kevin
Ohh bear.
00:06:28 Kevin
So with that said, they then went into they they passed the budget, which a lot of people are going to argue that.
00:06:39 Kevin
The budget is a.
00:06:46 Kevin
Truck.
00:06:49 Kevin
They're they're going to argue that a lot of people.
00:06:54 Kevin
Wow.
00:06:57 Kevin
It is just a brain fog. Morning folks.
00:07:02 Kevin
Oh well, a lot of people are. Are are complaining that they passed.
00:07:05 Kevin
A.
00:07:05 Kevin
4 or 6% increase on taxes and like like I've been saying and I even brought it up during the Amy Sherburne interview was that if you have 6%.
00:07:17 Kevin
Like the and I and I got some more firmer numbers. It's closer to 50% of the general Fund budget, right? So they say $29 million budget. Well, you're including water and sewer.
00:07:28 Kevin
Like water and sewer, bringing their own revenue, you're not allowed to miss. You're not allowed to make up the finances, so water and sewer, bringing their own revenue and they pay their own expenses like independent of the general fund.
00:07:40 Kevin
And independent of each other too. So like you can't bring in a sewer money into the sewer bill and pay for water expense with it and and and vice versa.
00:07:51 Kevin
They share billing. That's about it. And since they don't put a flow meter on your your poop pipe leaving your house, they they go off a pretty logical assumption that every dollar that you're buying from the city is a dollar.
00:08:06 Kevin
Worth of sewage that you're disposing of. So that's kind of like the logic.
00:08:10 Kevin
There and so they'll charge you for how many gallons of water you consume to determine what your sewage usage is. And some of you have probably make the complaint that like, well, I fill out my pool once a year. How come I don't get a 50% discount because my pool water, if anything, gets drained into my yard.
00:08:28 Kevin
And blah blah blah well.
00:08:30 Kevin
You.
00:08:30 Kevin
Know.
00:08:31 Kevin
You could pay to.
00:08:32 Kevin
Have a very expensive impeller put in your sewage line, and then then you won't complain anymore because you'll have an accurate reading but.
00:08:42 Kevin
If you're.
00:08:43 Kevin
Kind.
00:08:44 Kevin
If you're not going to pay to have that done, like who should? Because if you make the city do it, your water and sewer bills are going to go up even higher. And then and then you're going to have an accurate, like, oh, my sewer bill went down a lot. Well, yeah. But you know what? There's still a cost of doing business and they're still overhead to running that facility, regardless of how.
00:09:00 Kevin
Many turds go.
00:09:00 Kevin
To them, so like like any business.
00:09:05 Kevin
You're gonna have to.
00:09:07 Kevin
Yeah, OK. Well instead of, you know, just whatever water and sewer are per like, all of a sudden, the the the price per gallon will go up for sewer. You'll be paying the same amount of money. It should be charged more per gallon because you're giving them less gallons they have to. They have to be able to cover costs. So but anyways.
00:09:27 Kevin
Is 6 1/2.
00:09:28 Kevin
Percent.
00:09:29 Kevin
Or 6% increase.
00:09:32 Kevin
On 50. So what you're left with is $20 million left of the general Fund, which is like your police, your fire or your parks, your, your city building your.
00:09:42 Kevin
Clerks, your auditors, assessors, your local, the Community Development Office, your DPW office, Your Streets division, your mechanics, all that stuff is covered under the General Fund.
00:09:56 Kevin
And a 50% of your revenue is brought in in the form of property taxes.
00:10:04 Kevin
On a $19 million budget, that means that like.
00:10:08 Kevin
I was talking to somebody the other day. If you just need to bring in.
00:10:13 Kevin
I I keep using the number 1 1/2 percent. I guess I've been corrected. It's it's closer to 2 1/2% for inflation. So if you have to raise taxes by 2 1/2%.
00:10:24 Kevin
Well, and I and I I'm I'm going to misspeak here, but just to show you where everybody else is, miss understanding comes from.
00:10:32 Kevin
You have to raise.
00:10:34 Kevin
The cost of doing business across the board by 2 1/2% to keep up with inflation. The issue with inflation is that.
00:10:43 Kevin
The 2 1/2%. If you're only raising.
00:10:48 Kevin
If you're only raising property taxes by 2 1/2%, you're not really getting anything done because.
00:10:56 Kevin
You're only getting half of it done because you're only raising half of your allotted budgetary.
00:11:01 Kevin
Amount.
00:11:02 Kevin
So if you're raising your whole budget by 2 1/2 percent, you actually have a 5% like you have a 2% increase across the board, but if you're only using half of that money to offset the the 2 1/2 percent on average for inflation, cause they're gonna be like, well, Kevin, what about the other 50%?
00:11:20 Kevin
Good point, except for the fact that.
00:11:23 Kevin
If you raise sales tax revenue, there's no true way to raise sales tax revenue. You can you can, and I don't even know if this is possible, but like.
00:11:33 Kevin
This, the city share could increase. You know, I think it's like 1% or a half a percent of whatever the 8% sales tax is. Maybe we're 1 1/2%, but you could say, hey, we're gonna go up another half a percent on sales tax. Everybody's gonna be ****** that pays to buy stuff. You're going to have less people buying stuff here, and it will end up equaling out.
00:11:52 Kevin
Or.
00:11:53 Kevin
You try to do some promotion to try to get more people to buy stuff, which is dumb. You're not going to be able to. You know, if you have a way of getting more people to buy stuff to increase your sales tax revenue, then you'd be a very wealthy city because like, that's that's a that's a hard not to try to crack. A lot of people in industry can't do that. Like you have people that are in the free markets that are trying to break that.
00:12:15 Kevin
Not every day. How do I get more people to buy my product? You know, the city of Olean is just going to miraculously convince more people to buy **** to pay higher, to pay sales tax so.
00:12:26 Kevin
It's hard to mess with those numbers. That's just the market. People are going to buy with upturns in the economy, downturns in the economy, some things stay relatively flat sometimes if you boost your population, you may have an influx. So I guess cracking that not might be a better way, but it's going to be way better than trying to attempt to raise sales.
00:12:45 Kevin
Tax and watch it just.
00:12:47 Kevin
Go down because people are going to be like you're going to have a bunch of people that just are less likely to buy because it's costing them more or you're going to have people that are in protest and going to go to Pennsylvania to buy so they don't have to pay, New York State sales tax.
00:13:00 Kevin
And there's those different there's those different attitudes. You're not. There's no real way for you to crack the nut on trying to increase the other 50%. So you're stuck with this 50% of property taxes, which is really easy, because what do they do foreclose on? You can't go astronomical. Whether people lose their minds. But you also like people are going to sell their homes like people still going to buy groceries.
00:13:20 Kevin
An 8 1/2 percent sales tax. They're not going to buy.
00:13:25 Kevin
They're not like they're not going anywhere at a 5% increase and that's the minimum you're going to have to charge, because if you have to compensate for 2 1/2% inflation and you're only, you only have 50% of the budget to to revenue of the budget to to to raise to bring up that 2 1/2%.
00:13:44 Kevin
Unless you have.
00:13:44 Kevin
Other different feats like fees like they raised? Yeah, sure. They raise permit fees a couple of dollars and ambulatory fees and this and that. But like with the big one on the 50%, the other 50% is that sales tax, you're not really going to touch it. You can try to make up for it. So but in order, if you were to, if you couldn't, so since they raised the ambulance fees and stuff that it is compensate it is offset.
00:14:04 Kevin
A little bit to know that number would be nice to see, but like.
00:14:11 Kevin
It's just tough. It's tough so. But like if you have, if you need to raise to compensate for just a minimum of 2 1/2 percent, you got to think there was years that was stagnant and didn't really like. It was like 1%, half a percent zero and then but then there was like.
00:14:26 Kevin
Like last year or the year before, it was like 8%, nine percent. It was crazy numbers. And so now that's gonna overall change the average and maybe that's why I've been updated on the 2 1/2%.
00:14:37 Kevin
From some people that I've been talking with, but the 2 1/2%, if you have to compensate for that, that's just even having to raise half of the budget by 2 1/2%, that's still at raised to the sale. The property taxes by 2 1/2%, that is still an income like.
00:14:52 Kevin
That it that it's like it's.
00:14:54 Kevin
That's still over the tax gap. You have to pass a resolution to break the tax gap to get it done.
00:15:01 Kevin
And then you still you have 50% of your body.
00:15:08 Kevin
You know, maybe it's maybe it's not 50%, maybe it's more like 60, maybe maybe you have a 2%.
00:15:14 Kevin
Missing there for your estimated inflation cause you also don't know what inflation is gonna be till the end of the year. You would hope that it's.
00:15:21 Kevin
You would hope that it just disappears and it's only 1% or half a percent, but that's never, that's not really the case. And you can't. You're not banking for it this year. You're banking for it for all future years as well. So if it's if the average, the new average is 2 1/2%, even though it might come in at 2% this year, you still have to compensate because next year you're going to need that extra half a percent.
00:15:42 Kevin
To cover it.
00:15:43 Kevin
So to cover the 3% next year, right, so and in the 3% that means 6% property tax increase roughly so.
00:15:54 Kevin
Just a lot to comprehend. It's.
00:15:57 Kevin
Makes your head spin, but that's that's what I mean. Governments like running a business. It is like it is not the same as and people need to understand that.
00:16:06 Kevin
People used to flip out the the school tax or the property or the water bill. Oh, you're supposed to be never net neutral. Supposed to be revenue, revenue neutral. You're not supposed to shoot for revenue. It's like, yes, but you still have to hit the mark. You can't go under. You can't go into the loss category. You're not a charity, right? Like you're still running.
00:16:26 Kevin
A business, really. I mean you you can't if you just consistently lose money every year, then all of a sudden when people look, why are you raising taxes 60%? Ohh, because we didn't. We didn't rate. We didn't do anything. We we dropped the ball 10 years ago and we're finally catching up with it by this and so.
00:16:44 Kevin
Which was a hard egg to swallow. I mean, I sat in on some of those.
00:16:49 Kevin
Those meetings.
00:16:52 Kevin
When I was not an Alderman, I was just a lowly landlord and I would come to those meetings and listen to all the landlords complain about water bills and stuff. And it's like now I get it. Now I see you got to make the tough decisions people are going to have outcries, you're just going to. But you got to ride the ship like we're going to do. We're going to 11 to 17.
00:17:12 Kevin
People complain. So we're gonna bankrupt the, you know, the water sewer fund. We're gonna bankrupt this fund just to make sure those people don't have to pay an extra dollar. No. Like.
00:17:22 Kevin
You got to just do your job and make sure that the ship the ship like so you like. You don't have this family, you know, die of thirst because this this group of people doesn't want to like, doesn't want to pay an extra penny for their water. And then all of a sudden, we can't. Now we can't provide you with anything. You know what I mean? Like that's that's the issue with going bankrupt.
00:17:43 Kevin
Like it's.
00:17:44 Kevin
And the service is not available.
00:17:46 Kevin
You have a diner or restaurant like I really like that place, but I wish they wouldn't raise their prices. It's like, well, yeah, but they have to raise their prices. Unless you don't want that diner to exist. That's kind of the that's the end game. But we're running short on time here, folks. I know. I was going to delve more into the comments of the meeting, but I guess we'll do that on a different day. Maybe tomorrow. All right, guys.
00:18:06 Kevin
We'll see you next time. Life 22.