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by Chris Littleton, Founder of Tennessee Rising.
Murfreesboro city council approved the first read of the 2020 budget which would increase the property tax rate by about 35%. A required 2nd read of that budget will happen June 13 before the tax increase is final. Skipped my lunch time to sit in the council meeting, and what I witnessed was shocking arrogance and a lack of insight and creativity in solving the city’s financial problems.
With Murfreesboro facing a multi-million dollar hole in the upcoming budget, the council’s entire discussion centered around justifying the proposed tax increase. At no point was there even a conversation focused on cutting spending or making serious changes in the upcoming budget. Nothing. Not one minute.
The City Manager said they looked at department budgets for months, and there was simply nothing left to cut. They discussed how taxes hadn’t been raised in years. They talked about all the wonderful things that Murfreesboro has become, and they celebrated the spending choices of the past.
At no point were any changes in spending behavior discussed.
While referencing all the spending decisions of the past, Councilman Eddie Smotherman, said that the $5 million spent on Miracle Field at Sports*Com was the best money the city had ever spent. I responded to his comment by calling him an “idiot.” Ok, probably not the best decision on my part in the passion filled moment, but Smotherman’s comment summarized everything you need to know about the fundamental problem we face and the arrogance of those elected officials.
Miracle Field is a wonderful cause. I whole-heartedly support efforts to make the lives of those with special needs as joy filled as possible. But Murfreesboro spent money on that playground while it was running a city council acknowledged deficit in operating revenue that has only been patched the last few years with the sale of city land. Great cause, but Murfreesboro had no money to spend on the effort.
The point is – the worthiness of the cause does not justify spending taxpayer money on discretionary projects that require more debt and deficit spending. Many causes are worthy of support. Many causes need our help, and many causes sincerely and truly transform people’s lives. But, if there is no money – there is no money. This is what the council does not understand, as they have become a rubber stamp for any and all ideas. It is their job to make tough decisions. It is their job to say NO when there is no money. Unquestionably, that responsibility isn’t fun, but it is necessary.
If you and your family were barely paying your bills, would you run up your credit card with charges on new TVs, video games and vacations? Of course not. It’s very tough, but you would focus on your core needs of shelter and food for your family before you did anything else. Yet, that is exactly what Murfreesboro has been doing.
Parks, tennis complexes and golf courses are wonderful. My kids use these facilities more than most Murfreesboro residents. My son plays tennis and is at the Adams Tennis Complex nearly every week. It’s a wonderful place. But it is absolutely immoral to require people to subsidize my family’s tennis hobby. And, it is even more immoral to raise taxes on people to continue funding my family’s tennis hobby as we would play tennis whether the city owned a facility or not.
What do the raw dollars tell us? Apparently the council’s mysterious inability to find spending cuts isn’t so mysterious.
All the community services (golf, tennis, gyms, etc) bring in around $5 million in revenue each year, but the cost to run them is $17 million in the 2020 Murfreesboro budget, a $1.5 million increase over the previous budget. So not only will the parks and recreation department result in a $12 million net expenditure in the 2020 budget, but that expenditure is $1.5 million higher than it was just one year ago.
Also from the 2020 budget: “The Parks & Recreation Department has several projects in process including a new maintenance facility estimated at approximately $1 million, $400,000 a mountain bike trail in Barfield Park, the Patterson Park dehumidification pool project estimated at approximately $1 million, $420,000 in improvements to facilities at Cannonsburgh old town village, and continued improvements and additions to the greenway system of approximately $500,000.”
Council and I can disagree over a ton of things, but one thing is for sure – a mountain bike trail is not a necessity. Recreational facilities are a ton of fun, and I use them with my family. But they are not a need. They are a want. Raising taxes on a person who can’t afford it in order to build a new mountain bike trail is horribly immoral and a terribly reckless decision by the council. It is inexcusable.
And this is where both the arrogance and lack of creativity come to a head with Murfreesboro’s elected officials. They say to the public – there is nothing more to cut. They say we have no choice but to raise taxes. But in the same budget, they increase spending in a ton of non-necessity areas.
Council says they have no solutions to the budget deficit, but refuse to consider a single fundamental change to the situation. Many of these recreational facilities could be sold right now. The cash from the sale could be used to fill the current budget deficit, and the city would no longer have the long term liability of maintaining the facilities and paying the personnel (427 full and part time positions in parks and rec alone).
This does not mean Murfreesboro would be without recreational facilities. It simply means the city would not run those facilities, and taxpayers who do not use those services would not be paying for them. If people want to join a gym, they can still join a gym. If people want to play golf, they can still play golf. But if the facilities were owned privately, the fees for those services would only be paid for by those who use them – just like Golds Gym or Stones River Country Club are right now.
And this is just the beginning of potential solutions to short term cash problems and long term planning the city is not even discussing.
At the meeting, council approved an increase in trash collection fees. Trash services is expected to cost close to $6 million in 2020, but those services do not need to cost the city anything. In a large number of municipalities across the US, and for anyone in Rutherford County not living in Murfreesboro, people contract with private trash collection companies like Republic Services or Waste Management directly. Yes, the cost for private services can be a little more than what the city is currently charging, but the cost and personnel the city has been paying for would no longer exist at all if those services were fulfilled by private companies. The long term costs of a solid waste department would never be a consideration again.
Unfortunately, the elected officials in Murfreesboro are not discussing any kind of fundamental changes to spending and city services that would properly prepare the city for the next 50 years. They are simply requiring more money from taxpayers without altering the problems that got us to a budget deficit in the first place.
In 2020, multiple of these councilmen will be up for election. We need to remember at this moment – they had choices. They could have done things differently. Instead, they chose to socialize the cost of golf and tennis. They chose to fund more of the same with more of your money, and that is just plain wrong. Sign up to help us fight in 2020!
