Our latest Common Council meeting was a packed night, with approval of the city’s proposed budget for 2008. Here are the highlights, Part 1.
Jim Coan’s Big Night.
Background — the Common Council, at its last meeting on November 6th, increased the amount of the tax levy to the maximum that Wisconsin would allow for 2008. The stated purpose of the increase was to put money into a contingency fund, on the theory that if the state allowed a given tax levy, the city should take advantage of it, to increase the tax levy to the maximum percentage allowed by law. At the time of the November 6th meeting, City Manager Kevin Brunner proudly declared that the increase was a good idea, as the city had to “use it or lose it.”
In the intervening two weeks, Jim Coan saw an opportunity to persuade Council members to advocate an amendment to the city’s budget proposal, to add an additional officer. That’s an approximately 80,000 dollar, annual expense. Coan proposed getting the money from the increase in the tax levy, plus elimination of other proposed (non-police) positions.
(I advocated, in my commentary on the proposed budget, that spending be reduced, and passed back to residents, by the equivalent of 5% per year below the levy. The Common Council moved in the opposite direction, rushing to tax to the maximum extent allowed by law.)
I knew about Coan’s plans, including taking Common Council members on patrol car rides around the city. I expected him to succeed in his efforts, on a 5-2 vote.
It was a success for Coan, winning on a narrow 4-3 vote. Jim Coan had a public relations problem after the string of burglaries that hit the city, and this was an opportunity to say that he needed more officers. The problem, you see, wasn’t that his force is ill-trained; it’s that they are understaffed!
His department took Common Council members on patrol car rides, at a time of public concern about crime and — poof! — there was an amendment to the proposed 2008 budget for another officer. I do not know, however, if Coan gave supportive Council members a sucker and a pat on the head after each ride.
Implications:
(1) For Public Safety. Coan has no evidence that another officer would have prevented the robberies. One more patrol officer on a poorly trained force will gain us nothing. The existing force bungled the investigation, and Coan cannot show how one more officer would have made a difference. His present force doesn’t make a sufficient difference.
(2) For the Budget. We will have an additional 80,000 expense, annually. The proposal to tax to the limit for a contingency fund lasted – wait for it – less than two weeks. The administration wanted its contingency, but Coan wanted his officer. Coan won.
(3) For Common Sense. Miss Kienbaum voted for the proposal on the theory that they’d have to approve an additional, full-time officer, sooner or later. Really? Why the presumption of inevitability? It’s not inevitable, any more than other human events are inevitable.
(4) For Kevin Brunner. I have been critical of our city manager’s reliance on planning, but worse still has been his politeness and deference to those causing real problems. All the quotations in the world won’t fix our police department.
A more honest forthright statement or two would help. When asked what he thought, about a proposal that turned his budget upside down in the space of two weeks’ time, the best that Brunner could say was that the council need not take action on the police request on November 19th. That’s true, but that’s not what really what Council members were asking. Did Brunner favor the additional of an officer or not? ‘Yes’ or ‘no’ was what people wanted to hear, and when they did not get ‘no,’ then went ahead and voted ‘yes.’
There are two possibilities: (1) Coan and Brunner were actually in agreement, but Brunner took a more neutral public position, or (2) Coan just ran around Brunner, and got his, Coan’s, way.
One thing’s certain: Coan set the agenda, either way. Coan got his majority, and showed the community who really runs this city. Either he did it through a behind-the-scenes agreement with Brunner, or by running around Brunner to upend the process. As an organizational and political matter, it’s more than a minor mistake to allow Coan to modify the process this way, on an amendment that cuts proposed personnel from other departments’ budgets.
Would the vote have gone the other way if Brunner had declared straightforward opposition? I don’t know. It would have been a sign, though, that a man appointed to manage the city can at least manage its administration and that administration’s budget proposal.
I do know that Coan is the most powerful man in town. He may be untrustworthy, but he can gin up a majority when he needs one. It’s not by accident that Coan sits at the table during the meeting, unlike any other department head. He has a small but vocal constituency, the Whitewater Register behind him, a compliant police commission, a cowed Common Council, and an overly deferential city administration. Jim Coan has not been held accountable in this town, and when he wants something – even something that he’ll squander – he gets it.