The best way to keep property taxes lower is to attract business. Careful spending and budgeting goes a long way too, of course, but you can only cut so far. Finding more ways to make money gets better results in the long run.

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Public Safety Theme Area (total: $488,000)

Police records management
Reduce staffing resources in this area by eliminating a part time position. This action would result in pushing additional administrative work out to the officers but would avoid a corresponding loss to front-line service funding. ($20,000)

Traffic enforcement
This would entail the elimination of one full time police officer position. There would also be a reduction in fleet costs associated with this decision. ($125,000)

Crime analysis
Reduce non-sworn officer staffing resources in this area. The fulltime crime analyst position would be eliminated. ($71,000)

Patrol
Eliminate one patrol officer position. Combined with the traffic unit position, this would reduce the sworn positions from 75 to 73. ($96,000)

Fire code inspections
Eliminate one fire inspector position. The remaining inspector position would complete priority inspections. The Protective Inspections department would provide some assistance in meeting other inspection needs. The Fire Marshal would pick up several additional duties. State inspectors would complete inspections currently done by City inspectors on their behalf. Slower response to some service requests could be expected. ($95,000)

Fire suppression operational storage requirements

Postpone the planned improvements at Fire Station No. 1. Physical storage space has become a challenge at Fire Station No. 1, given the change in equipment requirements that has occurred since this building was initially built. The staff at this facility will need to continue to work in the space available until such time that funding becomes available to complete the anticipated expansion of one of the equipment bays. The budget savings would be the avoidance of the annual debt service payment, as the $620,000 project was to be funded with bond proceeds.

Two of my favorites outside of the public safety area are:

Heart of the City (HOC) beautification

Through various degrees of footprints, the beautification efforts including flower baskets and tree lighting in the HOC could be consolidated which could eliminate or reduce spending on these items. Staff has identified a number of parameters including various sizes of the HOC beautification area, and length of time that the holiday lights would be on which could reduce costs by 30%, 50%, 70%, or 100%. The total cost of the Hanging Basket and Snowflake/Tree lighting is about $100,000 and the City receives about $37,000 in donations for the program from the Burnsville Community Foundation. This proposal could include an elimination of the flower baskets and tree lighting in the greater area surrounding the HOC as is covered currently in various degrees to a small footprint including the Nicollet Commons Park ($70,000)

Tourism services
Dissolve the contract with the Convention & Visitors Bureau and assume this work with existing City staff and available overhead assistance. Staff assignments would be adjusted to allow for providing tourism services. The lodging tax collected must be spent on tourism activities and cannot be used for other general city purposes. The impact of redirecting existing staff resources is the City will have fewer staff resources (presently funded from the property tax levy) to support special projects that frequently arise, such as I Love Burnsville Week and other administrative initiatives. For example, the City’s branding initiative may need to be put on hold or reshaped to fit more squarely with the goal of attracting tourism. Lodging tax revenue is declining. 2009 lodging tax is estimated to be $265,000 – down 15% from a 2006 high of $310,000. $50,000 of reserve money was included in the 2009 CVB budget to help address funding challenges. Additionally, there is a strong possibility of losing the Select Inn to a redevelopment project. This would result in at least $20,000 of lost lodging tax revenue. To reduce costs to address the declining revenue, the City would be able to leverage existing overhead at no additional incremental cost (e.g., management oversight, office space, IT resources, accounting, communications, web site management, and insurance). There would no additional staff hired but rather existing staff, presently supported by other revenue, would be leveraged and reassigned to do this work. This would include staff skilled in communications, web management, promotions and the tourism industry. Tourism stakeholders (hotels, restaurants, etc.) would likely see an increase in both quality and quantity of promotional services – achieved through leveraging of existing City television, web specialists, IT personnel, and other communications vehicles. The Council may want to consider appointing some of these same stakeholders to a tourism advisory committee. ($145,000)

I’m laughing out loud over $145,000 and $70,000 for absolutely ridiculous bullshit that is no business of a City Council to spend tax dollars on. NONE WHAT-SO-EVER.

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Capital projects, Vehicle, Equipment, and Facilities Fund

Defer improvements to the round maintenance facility (including
improvements for The GARAGE) $500,000

Page 17

http://www.burnsville.org/DocumentView.asp?DID=1304

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http://www.burnsville.org/DocumentView.asp?DID=1304

Includes elimination of two police officers and a Fire Inspector position resulting in $300K in savings of the targeted $1.5 Million.

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Aside from the ones from skeptic2209, I didn’t see any useful contributions from the posters in that Strib thread aside from maybe closing the Alimagnet performing arts center (I don’t know enough about that facility to know if it’s worth doing, but it does seem redundant with the PAC). Like the guy who wanted to get rid of the Parks and Rec department — WTF? Reduce snowplowing?

It is true that Apple Valley, Burnsville, and others needed to be smarter about how they’ve used their money in the past and now are going to have to make some changes as a result of it. But gutting city services to the core is just going to make them worse places to live.

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