If you like that philosophy, you live in a great city for that. For example, Maple Valley has one of the lowest utility taxes out of 213 cities in Washington. The average is about 5.8%, and our tax rate is 2.25%.

So, to meet some of the budget shortfall and to pay for some new services, an increase of .75% has been proposed. If your annual utility bill is $6000, your tax would go up about $45 for the year. Since we’re always comparing ourselves to Black Diamond and Covington (sure hope we don’t shower together), Black Diamond is at 6%, while Covington is at 5.5%. If you are a business owner though, .75% is a lot.

Later, there was a discussion on the property tax increase, which the city can choose between two options. We can raise them either 1% or some other slightly smaller number, which yields a difference of about $61,000. Divide by about 10,000 households or so, and you’ll end up paying $6 more or less per year, depending on which option is chosen. And yes, one councilmember did express that in Latte Math Units (2 per year).

Alright, let’s get to the proceedings in order of appearance:

* * * VOIP PHONES * * *
City Hall is moving, but the phones will be left behind. A brand-new VOIP system will be installed at the new location, which will really minimize downtime for the city’s phones. It’ll run us about $70K, and hopefully that figure includes installation.

VOIP stands for Voice Over Internet Protocol, and very basically means we’ll be making calls over the Internet. If you use the Vonage phone system, you already have something similar. When I moved my company from Tukwila to Kent, I found it was cheaper to buy a new phone system and have it up and running, rather than try to move a slightly dated system and have a lot of downtime. I didn’t go with a VOIP system, due to ongoing security maintenance concerns, so hopefully the city won’t have those issues.

We might save $6K off of that $70K figure if we don’t go with the accounting software that monitors phone traffic and gives reports. I paid for this software with my phone system, and I almost never use it.

* * * SIF * * *
The School Impact Fee is up for discussion, but there wasn’t a real serious debate. The amount charged is calculated with a formula based on square footage and student population, which also takes into account the current bond rate. So, if the bond $ is high, the School Impact Fee is low. Right now, we have a very low bond rate, according to the unnamed Authority Figure who explained it to the councilors. I think her name was Lauren.

The only other interesting fact that came out of this was that we have between 78 and 85 portable classrooms in use in the Tahoma School District. Wow. Maybe we should start encouraging more homeschoolers if we aren’t going to build bigger schools.

* * * DECISION TIME! * * *
Just kidding. We don’t usually get actual decisions here. But the council does just have three weeks left to make some budget decisions. Three weeks sounds like a long time, but the reality is, they’re only meeting for about 9 hours to decide everything.

Last week, the discussion revolved around General Fund dollars, and tonight was about Capital Improvement Plan dollars. The plan is a 6-year plan, on how to spend about 65 Meeeelyun dollars. This money goes to parks, transportation, community facilities, debt payments, surface water management, and a tiny slice for the golf course.

The scary part? We rely on grant money to fund just over 30% of this. Yikes. We need our Schmoozer in Chief to go get that money, along with our savvy City Manager & His Staff. Well, they’ve got 6 years to get it, so good luck everybody!

The Park Impact Fee (PIF) came up again, and there are two dollar figures proposed for this. This fee is collected when a developer builds something like a house, or a commercial building, but I think commercial buildings pay more; not sure there. One figure is about $2700, and the other is about $3600. The larger figure would give the city some spending cash to buy up land if something became available. The councilors gave mixed opinions on this, but they didn’t have to decide today.

The property tax discussion came up next, and I referenced this earlier. After it was initially brought up, Councilor Johnson laid it out for us. We should only spend what we’re taking in, and should stop going to the taxpayers to fund the city goals. Cut staff positions, since that’s what Covington did this week (again).

The City Manager responded that we can’t use Covington, since they’ve overextended themselves with debt, and now they have to cut staff in order to pay off that debt. Maple Valley isn’t in a bad debt position, due to our fiscally very conservative nature.

The next question to him was, if there was no utility tax increase, what would he cut? Answer: Parks, and maybe a building inspector.

* * * MAINTENANCE FACILITY * * *
Regular readers of this blog might have heard me complain about the Public Works department having to store their equipment in the parking lot at Lake Wilderness Park. Well, there’s $250K in this year’s budget to come up with an interim solution, which is a steel building on city property next to the Summit Pit ballfields project. According to the PW Director, it would meet the bare minimum of federal standards we need to comply with by 2012.

There isn’t enough money for a new permanent building at the moment. The Tahoma School District recently completed one for about 4.7 Meeelyun dollars, and we don’t have that much available. The latest idea is to get a couple of roommates to split the cost, and create a joint facility with Black Diamond and Covington. We’ll probably also have to pay for a label maker to make sure that Maple Valley doesn’t eat Covington’s sandwiches out of the community fridge. Although, it would give us another forum to fully express our passive-aggressive nature, such as “OK, sommmmmmebody left the mower out in the rain and sommmmmmebody forgot to clean the grass off the blades. I don’t want to name names, but their initials are Black Diamond”.

* * * BUILDING INSPECTOR ON THE CHOPPING BLOCK * * *
If you are a building inspector for the city of Maple Valley, stop reading now. Really. OK, if you insist on continuing to read this, be aware that your job today is like a game of Keep Away. The city staff is holding your job like a football, and some of the councilors are running up to take it away, while the staff passes it from one person to the next. The Hot Seat had more butts in it than a Sir-Mix-A-Lot video, while each of them took turns defending the usefulness of having a 3rd building inspector.

The case for the inspector is, we are using them to conduct the surface water management inspections, which is required under federal guidelines. If we lay off the inspector, we’d simply have to contract with an outside inspector to do the work. Plus, we’ve got Fred Meyer coming up next year, which is going to need a lot of inspection.

Several councilors expressed concern about raising any taxes, but cutting the building inspector position was the only straightforward suggestion. The non-specific attitude of “man, we’ve gotta do something to cut this budget” won’t work too well if we only have about 9 hours to find a solution and no other real suggestions.

QUESTION FOR DISCUSSION: Do you think we are overtaxed, undertaxed, or taxed just right? Are you willing to give up some services like park programs for lower taxes? Is there something specific in the city budget you would cut? The public hearing didn’t get much action, but you can always rant in here.

* * * COUNCIL RULES OF PROCEDURE CHANGES * * *
There are five suggested changes for council rules:

1) Inclusion of language clarifying the rotation of who leads the Pledge of Allegiance (the Mayor names who will lead the Pledge of Allegiance).
No one seems to think we need to change how it’s currently done. Everyone seems happy that they are getting to lead the pledge regularly enough. I think if you wanted to lead it, and you weren’t selected, you could just say it faster than the person who was. I’ll try this out next week and let you know how it goes.

2) Adding language to ensure that Public Comment is used for comments related to the business of the City and not personal attacks.
That pesky 1st Amendment gets in the way here. Our City Attorney reminded the council that Public Comment isn’t required, after bringing up the free speech issue.

3) Clarify expense policies for Councilmembers and duty to provide adequate cancellation notice.
No discussion on this, just a lot of head-nodding.

4) Adding additional Public Comment opportunities to the agenda of either Regular Business meetings or Study Sessions, or both.
Most councilors are in favor of Public Comment every week, and not just at the business meetings. This will probably happen, giving the Usual Suspects another 6 minutes per month to speak their minds.

5) Term limit of two consecutive two-year terms for Mayor and Deputy Mayor.
Only one councilor likes this, and not the one who put it on the agenda. This won’t happen.

* * * NEXT WEEK * * *
If you don’t read the Paper of Record, or you couldn’t find it in there, here’s your Unofficial Notice of Public Hearing. Next week, you can give your opinion to the council regarding the School Impact Fee. My prediction? Two speakers, no real opinions, meeting closed.

See you next week!