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Manzanita’s Budget: A Look Behind The Numbers
The past few years have brought many changes to those who call Manzanita home. One means to measure our quality of life and community health can be found in the Budgets which support our City services. Here’s a snapshot of what our Budgets are supporting since 2021.
A 103% increase in Personnel Costs of City Hall staff. $410,552 to $832,500. Our City Manager’s annual salary and benefits alone are over $230,000. This is almost double what former City Manager Jerry Taylor, with 20 more years experience as a City Manager was making when he retired in 2018.
A 200% increase in Water Utility Billing Administration costs. $16,687 to $50,000. For this increase in service cost you receive higher water rates and a reduced monthly base water allotment.
A 57% increase in Personnel Costs for Police. $519,374 to $816,000.
A 36% increase in Indirect Cost Transfers from the Water Department to City Hall Staff for their administrative support. $157,348 to $214,020. To those residents that took the time to respond to the survey on their preference to see more of their monthly water fees remain in the Water Fund for projects, the Council’s response was we’re not interested in what you want.The City acknowledges that once these revenues are transferred to the General Fund, they get spent for things unrelated to the operation of our water system. When asked why these costs for City Hall staff support continues to increase each year, not a single example of why the workload continues to increase can be provided.
A 20% increase in hiring of Full Time employees. Despite the hiring surge, citizens routinely report phone calls not returned and emails unanswered. City Hall staff are apparently so busy that once our new City Hall is open, it will still be on restricted access hours to the public.
A 794% increase in Tourism Promotion. $110,174 to 984,890. The Council’s goal to turn Manzanita into a year round visitor destination and keep the Short Term Rental money machine humming along must seem to be a major success for City officials
Speaking of those visitors, our City Manager falsely claims that they pretty much pay for all of our infrastructure. City Budgets tell the true story.
Since 2021, not a single Transient Lodging Tax (TLT) dollar from the General Fund has been transferred to the Water Fund for infrastructure development or maintenance needs for our water system.
Expenditures to maintain our parks infrastructure actually declined from $56,130 to $29,500. And whatever happened to the development of the new park that was used to justify purchase of the Underhill property and of the walking trail system that seems to have disappeared from any funding efforts?
Visitor TLT revenue transferred to support our storm drainage infrastructure amounted to approximately 2% of total TLT revenue collected during this time period.
And those thousands of visitor vehicles that substantially contribute to the wear on our streets, approximately 6% of total TLT collections during this time period went to support our street infrastructure. Expect to soon hear that our Council will be proposing to fix that problem by charging full and part time residents a monthly Street Utility Fee which will be added to your water bill for street maintenance.
This Budget also provides the fiscal support for the Council’s new Short Term Rental policy. After years of discussion and hand wringing, the Council concluded that the path forward for improved community and neighborhood livability was allowing the number of short term rentals in our neighborhoods to continue to increase.
In 1961 President Eisenhower warned the country about the dangers of the Military Industrial Complex, particularly the influence of the military and defense industry on government policy makers. These past few years have brought to full bloom the dangers to residents of our local Short Term Rental City Government Complex. For the past 30 years, City officials have obediently put lipstick on the STR pig and told us that our community had no choice but to increase rentals in our neighborhoods and to be grateful to the visitors who filled the City coffers with rental revenue to keep the City functioning.
The winners and losers in this tragedy are easily identified. Full time and part time residents have lost a quiet residential community once filled with children, working families and seniors simply wanting to live out their lives in quiet peace.The Short Term Rental interests aided by our public officials and their fixation on ever increasing revenue collection are the winners.
As a resident, has your quality of life and satisfaction with our City government improved in proportion to the ever increasing costs of City services noted above?
I would have urged citizens to share their thoughts on these matters with Councilors during one of the Coffee with Councilors sessions. Unfortunately, other than a few Manzanita Club members no one is attending. Citizens have concluded that sharing their thoughts is a waste of their time. One thing that citizens can do is remember the names of those Mayors and Councilors who made and are continuing to make the decisions that have brought us to this unfortunate place in Manzanita’s history.
Randy Kugler
