| 12/16/2009 6:28:00 PM | Email this article • Print this article | Maplewood approves 2010 budget and property tax levy
Derrick Knutson
Review staff
In a budget discussion that lasted nearly 4 1/2 hours Dec. 7, the Maplewood City Council approved the city's 2010 budget and property tax levy.
The overall 2010 budget was set at just over $55.7 million, and the city's operating budget - not including capital improvements and debt service - is $31.7 million.
The council voted to approve the budget and levy by a 3-2 vote. Council members Will Rossbach, John Nephew and Kathy Juenemann voted to approve the budget, with Mayor Diana Longrie and council member Erik Hjelle dissenting.
The total property tax levy for 2010 is nearly $16.7 million, which is a five percent increase from 2009.
Maplewood Finance Director Robert Mittet explained that not all Maplewood residents would see an increase in their property taxes, though.
He said school district and Ramsey County property tax levies need to be taken into account as well, so residents in School District 622 will actually see about a $40 reduction in their property taxes from last year.
Residents in District 623 will see about a $19 rise in 2010, and those living in District 624 will see about a $45 increase, Mittet said.
The mayor's proposal
Before the meeting was opened to public comment, Longrie presented her own budget proposal to the council. Longrie said she could slash over $1.6 million from the budget to attain a zero percent levy increase, but she didn't go into great detail about how exactly those funds would be cut from some areas of the budget.
Her seven-page proposal did detail numerous staff cuts that accounted for some of the money, though. She proposed Maplewood reduce personnel in the city's citizen services department, the community development and code enforcement department, the community development and planning department, and the parks department.
She also added the city "should only have one city manager," so personnel and funding should be cut from that position as well. Maplewood went through a search process that took more than a year to hire current City Manager James Antonen, and Public Works Director Chuck Ahl serves as the city's assistant city manager in addition to his director position.
The mayor also said $400,000 could be cut from city vehicle "slush funds," but didn't detail how that would be accomplished.
Longrie also did not present her budget proposal to the rest of the council before the meeting, and she addressed that issue by referring to a post on Nephew's blog site criticizing her for that fact.
"I want to extend my apologies to Mr. Nephew because he feels that he would have liked to have had this in advance," she said. "I agree with that. There were a couple of things that prevented me from doing that."
She added she was unable to obtain all of the necessary information from city staff in time to address all of the items in next year's budget in her proposal, and she said she was told the 2010 budget supplement, which details where all the city money goes, would not be available until after a budget was approved. The mayor had announced she could attain a zero percent levy at the Sept. 14 meeting, giving her about a month to put together her proposal.
The council never actually ended up voting on Longrie's budget.
The public weighs in
Resident Mark Bradley expressed his concerns about business in Maplewood when the meeting was opened up to comments from the public.
He said the city should focus more on marketing to bring more businesses to Maplewood, and the city is seemingly lagging behind others in the metro area that have brought more new business in.
"We have to start selling on the idea that this is a city that has a future, and we have to attract people," he said.
Resident Elizabeth Sletten said she thought all of the consultant services for Maplewood should go out for bid.
North St. Paul resident Bob Zick was given about a half hour to state his concerns, and he spent the first part of his presentation reading from letters to the editor in the Pioneer Press that criticized the post-election council. He also said he was concerned about how much the city was spending on consulting services for engineering work, and said he thought city staff was being paid twice for their efforts.
Juenemann said citizen "assertions" bothered her, and city engineers don't get paid twice for their work.
"That inference was, as usual, incorrect," she said.
She then asked City Engineer Michael Thompson to address the issue.
He explained that staff time spent on city projects such as street improvements goes towards staff salary and it not in addition to the base salary staff is hired at.
Juenemann added that Maplewood does not operate like a business, and should not be treated as such. She said the city has to wait to get money from taxes to pay operating costs, unlike businesses that have a steady revenue stream. In response to resident comments about staff being overpaid, she said qualified city staff is essential to keeping Maplewood running.
"I do not want to sacrifice the quality of what we do in this city," she said. "I think there's value in paying the people who work here appropriately so they do their best."
After the meeting, Nephew expanded on staff contributions to the city. "Chuck (Ahl) really does a lot of different things. He's been the point person in getting tremendous amounts of federal grant money."
Derrick Knutson can be reached at dknutson@lillienews.com or at 651-748-7825.
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