EDITOR:
This letter below was sent to the Parkville Board of Aldermen this week.
I attended the Oct. 1, 2024 work session where the initial outline of the 2025 budget was presented. Below are my comments on the work session.
The title page of the presentation is labeled “2024 Requested Budget.” That staff had the wrong year was the first flag.
2025 Strategic Goals: City staff listed Organizational Excellence as its top goal. Besides being the equivalent of everyone gets a trophy, if staff doesn’t believe itself capable of delivering excellence, perhaps the first step of the board should be to evaluate staff.
The city’s primary responsibilities are static and should not change. Those are: 1) Public Safety; 2) Infrastructure (Roads/Streets/Sewer/Utilities); and 3) Services(residents/businesses/developers).
Staff listed Public Safety last, which is quite a statement about their focus. There was no mention of efficient utilization of tax resources.
Internal Service Fund (ISF): ISF is a means to allocate administrative costs to core operating departments (police, streets, etc.). Cost allocation is used in the corporate world to measure profits/costs of a business unit/product. The results are then used to develop forward rates/pricing. This may make sense for a large city. However, for a city the size of Parkville, and absent an enterprise fund, it is accounting gymnastics. Unless the board intends to eliminate administrative positions, this serves no purpose other than to fill time or justify a staff position.
That said, I suspect the real motive behind ISF is to replace (and escalate) the Sewer Fund administrative fee, which with the planned 2025 transfer of the sewer to PCRSD, will go away. ISF becomes a means to replace $360,000 of general fund revenue.
I challenged the Sewer Fund fee in 2016 and again in 2021. In both cases the method developed by the city’s financial advisor, and adopted by the city, grossly overstated the Sewer Fund charge. Had the advisor used ISF (i.e., fully absorbed costs), the result would likely have been a significantly lower charge. But that was not the intention of the then mayor.
For funds with spending restricted by ballot language (e.g., Public Safety #42), the ISF becomes a means to charge the operating departments for administrative expenses that have always been paid by general sales taxes and property taxes. Just as the Sewer Fund administrative fee became what I termed Mayor Nan’s ATM, so will the ISF become Mayor Dean’s (and City Administrator Alexa Barton’s) ATM. Oh, the deception–slush funds masked as cost accounting.
The Platte County Commission just reduced the county property tax rate due to excess sales tax receipts.
Other Matters
City Administrator Barton stated that a new position was necessary to “take out the trash,” or something to that effect. Other than being laughable, perhaps city staff should operate like any other small business in Parkville and take out its own trash.
A new position listed on slide 11 is for Building Facilities. Can this not be handled by Public Works? Public Works staff can handle streets but can’t change a light bulb? This borders on ridiculous.
Another future position listed is for Arts Council. Alderman Brian Whitley rightly questioned this and noted that it could be better handled by volunteers and outside organizations. This is an indication that city staff is veering off course.
Earlier this year, I requested staff salary data. Upon review, I noted that administrative staff costs were increased by over $500,000 from 2022 to 2024. This for a town of 8,000. I also inquired as to the City Administrator (CA) budgeted salary of $175,739 in light of the initial 2022 employment contract base pay of $135,000. My inquiry as to who sets the CA salary was met with this response: “We do not have records that address your specific questions.” A follow up inquiry received a reply from the mayor: “We felt that Alexa brought years more experience than most city administrators and had done an outstanding job in 2022.” Note that slide 14 of the budget presentation shows a CA salary range of $169,624 to $254,446. Has the city changed that much in less than three years?
Further to the salary increases from 2022, note that administrative staff includes a Deputy CA and an Assistant CA. A top heavy structure doesn’t always produce top level results. In the business world, top heavy staff structures have short lives.
Last, at various points during the presentation, the Deputy City Administrator/Finance Director struggled to explain certain elements of the budget, including the property tax levy. For a position with a pay range of $135,699-189,987, and with a budget as simple as that of Parkville, I would expect this person to essentially have every number memorized and not look to CA Barton as often as was done to explain the numbers.
While I understand that the aldermen attending did not have the benefit of receiving the presentation in advance, I hope that the board will do its job of representing taxpaying residents and not simply rubber stamp whatever is proposed by city staff, which in ways appears to be moving towards a costly mini empire.
--Gordon Cook
Parkville
