Joplin voters soundly rejected the proposed public safety tax today with 3,586 favoring the proposition and 4,643 voting against it.
The proposition, which would have increased property taxes to put money into the police and fire departments, only needed a majority vote to pass.
Why did it fail? What should city officials do
Leave your comments below.
9 comments:
Really bad timing the recession is hurting a lot of people.
1. repeal the appropriation for the ARPA funds that was designated at the meeting last night.
2. rework the distribution to maximize police/fire/public safety support for the max, up to 13.8 Mill if possible. The state of Missouri provides guidelines on this. The consultant will not support this, and that issue may need a firm hand to overcome.
3. immediately tell the Use Tax committee headed by Mr. Obrien to fund all police/fire public safety appropriations for 90% of all incoming and current funds, and cancel other projects. 2 mill $ right now will flow in.
4. immediately direct the police and fire chief to compose a comprehensive plan to stop crime in our city including arson, burglery, robbery, illegal drug use and open air drug markets, and to suppress crimes by transients, vagrants, the homeless and drug sellers and users, and employ the 'broken window theory' to attack crime. As of now there is no overall plan or will to do this.
5. ask local foundations and wealthy individuals for grant money to fund more police officers and their support teams. Set up a public fund for this purpose, open to public scrutiny.
6. use innovative ways to fund the police, cancel boutique projects and use the money for the police, eg the 'electric eye' automatic gate 200K$ project on the Murphy low water bridge. Fund 4 officers at 50K$ each for salary and benefits instead.
7. ask for Mr. Edwards' resignation. 2 tax proposals and 2 losses, time to go.
8. ask for the city attorney's resignation. His comments at the meeting last night were out of line.
9. immediately rework the plans for the infrastructure money to support public safety in all the projects.
10. give a directive to all city depts. that in all requests, comments, etc. they are to include a summary of how this project supports public safety and police/fire.
11. make public the secret agreement between the city manager and the police/fire unions that was to take effect if the tax passed.
12. appoint a full time public ombudsman to represent the citizens in all tax discussions, unpaid, but with designated time at each work session and council meeting to review public concerns directly to the council.
13. publish a public apology from the city council to the citizens of Joplin for funding and organizing a campaign that included disrespectful remarks and an unwillingness to listen to sincere concerns.
14. ask Mr. Lawson to step down from Mayor and rework the Mayoral election among the council. Public trust has been lost and it will take humility and hard work to win it back. Mr. Lawson does not have that capacity to accomplish that.
Now it's time for the council to GET TO WORK! From the mayor and city manager all the way down to the most part-time landscaper, EVERYONE needs to identify and eliminate waste. Time to also identify wasteful programs and eliminate them. Time to sell land! Time to light a fire under lazy and complacent public employees. This probably won't give them the amount of $ (grift) they wanted, but it might find a million, maybe 2 or 3. And that is a start. But that work is hard. Much easier to fleece the sheep than tighten your own belt.
8:57 Wow - you have laid bare - in a very "detailed" fashion - a blue print on how to move forward after the election loss. Your comments are "spot on" and the city council, mayor and city attorney (Mr. Edwards) would be very wise to follow them.
Item 11 (make public the secret agreement between the city manager and the police/fire unions that was to take effect if the tax passed.) was a real eye opener - this really shows - the lack of transparency and trust (from city government) that the tax paying citizens deserve.
Now that the issue has failed, is it possible for a local media outlet to ask some tough questions of the city government. I’m a resident of Joplin, property owner, tax payer and registered voter, but no one has asked the following:
1, how many of the employees of the Joplin Police Department are residents of, property owners in and registered voters in Joplin? I’m talking total employees, from chief all the way down through dispatch, how many? I have driven through neighboring communities and have seen countless JPD patrol cars (and I understand why, in the event they have to respond from home, this is faster). At least five JPD officers reside in CJ, another three in Webb. That’s at least eight city employees. Pretty sure they were in favor of the issue despite not having any property that would be taxed nor even the ability to vote in favor of the issue.
2, same question for the Joplin Fire Department. How many employees are actual taxpaying residents of Joplin? There is at least one captain who’s not and was one of the most outspoken supporters of a property tax increase. Wonder why? His own home and vehicles wouldn’t be subject to it.
I understand Joplin has 50,000 residents and the town grows five times larger than that during the business hours of the week, thus the city has to provide services for 250,000 and not just the 50,000 who live here. But how do city leaders expect us 50,000 residents to cover the costs completely of services for 250,000?
3, how many hours did city employees use on city time to lobby on behalf of this issue?
4, who paid for all the digital signs around Joplin encouraging residents to vote in favor? Was this paid for by the police and fire unions or city funds? Was city employees time used to put these signs up and take them down?
5, how many city department chairs are Joplin residents? I know at least three that are not property owners or registered voters in Joplin. How convenient for city leaders to lobby in favor of a tax increase when those department heads have no skin in the game?
Finally, police and fire deserve more pay and a larger budget to hire more staff. $30k a year to get shot at or enter burning buildings is not close to enough for the risk. Fast food restaurants pay more.
The mechanism to fund the budget increase was wrong. Explore drastic cuts throughout all city departments, close or sell the bottomless money pits (Memorial Hall, golf course, museum and pools) and focus on necessary city services.
Ask how the city attorney also owns the ignition interlock companies in Joplin gets people sentenced to use them. People don't trust city leaders. The Cornell Center for the RICH received much more support from city leaders than saving Memorial Hall or the public safety tax
Some excellent answers here, particularly 8:57 PM!
Let me expand on the trust issue, using the old saying "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."
Two previous public safety taxes have been passed by the voters. Many specific promises for them were broken, like that the first would not fund the retirement program (and that after the city pocketed a windfall tax settlement!) and now we can see the situation is significantly worse than before them.
This effort was nothing more than blackmail, give us more money or you will continue to suffer high crime rates, a very old trick for city governments. This government is not willing to reduce spending on any one of the over 1,000 programs of the city, one city political figure a few years ago said all were important. Yes, plenty use earmarked funds which can't be spent on public safety, but plenty don't.
The powers that be in the city will either have to start reallocating money in increasingly hard economic times (was there any sense they realized that?), and heaven forbid shut down some of these programs, or the city will continue to suffer. Granted, suffer most from property crimes, between citizens who even if unarmed often resist criminals and the police who take serious violence seriously we've got that sufficiently if not optimally covered.
All during the safety tax campaign - all we heard was - WE DON'T HAVE A PLAN B and WE MUST PASS THIS TAX NOW (WE DON'T HAVE TIME TO WAIT). Since the safety tax failed - city government is now regrouping (per Joplin Globe) to see what they can come up with (sounds like a Plan B to me). It just goes to show - scare tactics - do not always work.
The local barking chain tells us that the city manager, mayor and the heads of the police and fire union are huddled together to craft a solution to the failure of the property tax.
These are the same group that brought us the 21% property tax elevation, and reallocated the prob B funds from the police to all city employees.
If you see all solutions thru the lens of new taxes or more taxes, it is likely your new solution will be the same. Stay tuned.
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