City of Evansville releases budget suggestions presented via email

(Ed.note: Responding to a Freedom of Information request, the City of Evansville has relased the following idea summaries from email ideas submitted to it for budget reduction.)


Emailed Budget Suggestions
Suggestions that have been added since the 7/31/09 update are in italics.

General Suggestions – All Departments:
1. You can’t deplete services to balance a budget, but some areas could reduce expenditures, but then the argument of why us and not them comes to play (of which you may not have a choice in the matter either) and it will be depicted as playing favorites.
2. Everyone getting a paycheck from the city should take a day off. Everyone: the council, the administrator, the judge, all the employees. Whether you make $10 or $50 an hour it will add up and everyone is sharing in it.

Capital Budget:
1. One question that I feel is a big one is, how does the capital budget play into the numbers game of the budget. I could see not starting a project or projects that would cover the shortfall.

Finance:
1. Encourage all elected officials to forego their stipends for the next fiscal year. Those who will not do so should face opposition in coming elections. Our leaders must lead in times of fiscal crisis.
2. Perhaps some consolidation of services could result from closer proximity of PD to the City Hall.
3. Eliminate the City Administrators position. We have a very capable mayor and operated for many years without an administrator. We have in place plenty of qualified board members and councils to over see the Mayor. We have a Finance Director, City Clerk, Deputy Clerk, Human Resource Director and many assistants that run City Hall fine and would do fine w/ just the Mayor over seeing them. They all know city business very well.

Police:
1. Examine very seriously the possibility of cutting staff at the police department -- I've been looking over the "incident reports" in the Review. It appears that there are less than two incidents per hour, and a sizeable fraction of those are assisting people or handling phone messages at 535 E. Main, where the Police Station currently sits. How many people are necessary to handle two incidents per hour? Another sizeable number of incidents are "security checks". Exactly what does this mean -- a cop in a car drives by a place? There have been over 40 in the last two weeks at Antes Drive. Does this mean a cop drives through the park about 3 times a day? Each counts as an "incident"? Maybe I'm way off base, but please look into staff reduction at the PD.
2. Sell the current police station on Main St and move operations to the old fire station as soon as possible. Perhaps some consolidation of services could result from closer proximity of PD to the City Hall.

Public Works:
1. W&L could share equipment with Public Works which would spread out those purchases for DPW equipment to later dates.
2. In the winter if there is no snow what exactly do they do? How come I see hired summer help doing all the work while the full time year around people stand around doing nothing? Lets cut the summer help and require the full time employees to do work. Let's create a work cycle in the winter where some work a second shift to reduce overtime for snow removal on a late afternoon shift.

Parks:
1. Reduce mowing frequency of city parks; this may keep the city from hiring a seasonal worker or two in the PW Department for 2010.
2. Sell the city-owned parkland on S. 4th street (near the college apartments) to a developer.

Cemetery:
1. Council should consider an increase in cemetery fees. The cemetery should not be a drain on finances but should provide income to the city or be sold to a private group.

Water & Light:
1. Water & Light is actually exempt from this process, because they are a revenue based enterprise, not fund based like the city side of the budget.
2. W&L could share equipment with Public Works which would spread out those purchases for DPW equipment to later dates.
3. Council should consider an increase in payment from the water and light utility. The benefits of owning our own utility need to be further explored.
4. Start w/ cuts w/ Water & Light. They have more employees and vehicles then any other city department. They have new buildings and many new pieces of equipment. When there is no building going on in the city why are we building them new buildings and buying them new vehicles? They hire out most of their work. Why am I seeing W&L employees weed whacking and mowing lawn? Do they not have enough of their own work to do? At a typical incident when I drive by I see 4 guys standing around talking while one is actually doing the work. What company has all new equipment and trucks when there is no new building going on? I think they are a vital part of our community I just think we could cut some of the positions to save money.