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| Ian Austin/HOMETOWN ONEONTA Mayor Dick Miller delivers his first State of the City speech Tuesday, Jan. 18, in Common Council chambers, flanked by City Clerk Jim Koury, left, and City Attorney David Merzig. |
Editor’s Note: This is the text of Mayor Richard P. Miller, Jr.’s first State of the City speech, delivered Tuesday, Jan. 18, in Common Council chambers.
By almost any measure, 2010 was a very good year for the city.
Through a concerted, cooperative effort, we eliminated a budgeted deficit of almost $1.1 million (subject to final audit) and as a result, the city’s reserves grew nominally and thus remain available for future needs.
Common Council members and department heads worked together to produce many positive results.
In most categories, revenues exceeded forecasts and the deficit elimination came despite the city’s taking one-time charges related to early retirements.
The city’s Code Enforcement, Police and Fire departments were all strengthened during 2010. Oneonta Public Transportation, Water, Wastewater, Public Works and Highway, and City administrative offices continued to perform ably as in the past.
While services were maintained, the loss of key personnel in the Engineering and Community Development areas continues to present special challenges, with improvements anticipated in 2011.
The 2011 budget approved in December presents a general fund deficit of $458,000, one-third the amount anticipated when its preparation began in July 2010 as part of the multi-year financial planning process.
This much-improved result was due in large part to very successful negotiations to reduce health-care costs, and to early retirements and cost-management actions in non-personnel areas – all in conjunction with stable revenue.
The 2011 budget includes competitive compensation increases and benefit programs for unionized and administrative employees. It includes a property tax increase of 2 percent while water and sewer fees – both of which are well below state averages – were increased at somewhat higher rates to cover costs related to the improvement of both facilities.
While the financial results of 2010 and the lower projected deficit for 2011 are relatively comforting, 2012 and the years beyond continue to require serious attention and aggressive management.
Salary and benefit costs, including pension expenses, are certain to grow at rates substantially in excess of revenues. Much of the city’s revenues are dependent on state, national and world economic conditions out of our control, particularly given the challenges of New York State government.
Remarkably, city expenditures budgeted for 2011 are actually less in real dollars than in 2008. This comes without service reduction and real property tax increases averaging only 2.5 percent over the period, while state and sales tax revenues declined.
The city has proven its ability to manage its financial affairs, an important capability given the challenges ahead.
These challenges will require the mayor, Common Council, department heads, unionized and administrative employees to work together as we have in the past year.
I think – I hope – that most of us now recognize that we will have to make difficult choices among services, staffing levels, salaries and benefit programs.
While we are blessed with reserves that are well above those of most other cities in New York State, we will have to be creative in delivering the services the community has come to expect. This challenge is magnified by the need to accelerate our investment in roads, water and wastewater plants, and in-the-ground infrastructure of the city.
I am confident we have the people and processes to confront these issues, and am comforted by the fact that we have reserves to cushion the impact of these competing demands on resources. But I am sobered by what lies ahead. Without interventions such as we made in the past 12 months, it appears that our financial reserves could drop below acceptable levels in 2014 and be totally exhausted in 2015.
Managing the budget and providing services are necessary requirements of government, but we must go further. As management guru Peter Drucker has said, “Results are obtained by exploiting opportunities, not by solving problems. All one can hope to get by solving a problem is to restore normality.”
We have the opportunity to reposition this City, its surrounding communities and Otsego County relative to other regions with which we compete.
The City and Town of Oneonta constitute the hub of a region that includes parts of Delaware, Chenango and Otsego counties. The city is the employment center bearing all the costs of hosting our two wonderful colleges, while sharing the benefit of their presence across the region.
Almost 75 percent of retail sales in Otsego County are generated in the City and Town of Oneonta. We are increasingly the regional center of arts, culture and entertainment. Unless we challenge ourselves to think differently about our existing and potential assets, the past will define us in a changing world.
This year, special citizens groups, along with existing boards and commissions, have been working to help define our future:
• An environmental group issued an initial report on “Oneonta 2030,” a plan to enhance the sustainable nature of our community decades into the future.
• The Zoning Task Force is finishing what will be an 18-month effort to totally rewrite our code to protect existing neighborhoods, increase residential housing options, and make it easier to start and grow businesses here.
• The Charter Revision Commission will be proposing changes to the voters to streamline and modernize our government.
• Main Street Oneonta strengthened its staff, reorganized its board and refocused its programs.
• An arts, culture, and entertainment group is beginning this month to work on how to promote our community’s offerings more broadly within and beyond our region.
We will need to establish additional groups to work on such issues as neighborhood improvement and redistricting, but we have proven our ability to focus special citizen groups on these types of specific needs.
To my mind, there are two keys to making the Oneonta community even more vibrant in the future. Both require us to think regionally. Both rest on the assumption that one entity – whether it be a government, academic institution, or private entity – cannot be successful at the expense of another if we are to be successful collectively.
The first key is to bring more revenue – and visitors for special events – to the region in order to enhance services for our residents and our attractiveness to the outside world.
If we are to reduce our dependence on property taxes in a world where increased state support is very unlikely – and where more manufacturing jobs are unlikely as well – we must generate more revenue from visitors living beyond the immediate area.
Our region has the colleges, the Baseball Hall of Fame, summer baseball camps, Glimmerglass, and a vigorous arts and entertainment community. We have to organize and market our attractions collectively to take advantage of this opportunity.
The second key is to develop the ability to deliver the same or better government services with much greater efficiency and much less redundancy. Each entity of government works vigorously to deliver its own set of services as efficiently as possible, but among the entities there is disturbing overlap.
Over the last year, I have spoken with county, town and school district leaders, people of good will and all facing similar challenges. SUNY Oneonta’s Center for Economic and Community Development study this year, funded by the three local banks, confirmed previous studies of economic savings from consolidation of the city and town.
If conversations result from this study, the county should be encouraged to become a full partner. Savings could be accomplished over time without layoffs. In fact, our city, town and county could become the shining example to other communities around the state – and, certainly, to state government itself – of ways to serve our citizens without duplication and waste.
Government consolidation is a priority of Governor Cuomo, and local, grass root discussions are supported by Senator Seward. Funds are available to study and enable consolidation if the Town and County will join with us in the project.
I will continue to pursue their engagement in studying this together.
The forecast economic impact of a combined city and town (and to the other towns and the county) from sales-tax preemption would have to be carefully managed. But more economic activity in the region, generated by a stronger, more outward-looking Oneonta, would be a benefit for all even if enabled by some redistribution of sales tax dollars.
A recent opinion requested from the state Attorney General confirms that with special legislation, current town and city residents could remain in different property tax districts following consolidation, thus ensuring the continuation of low town property taxes into the future.
If property taxes across the county can be reduced, without compromising services, we will gain a real economic advantage over the rest of New York State A new government structure can be designed to ensure that all residents are properly represented. We need to consider these things and I will write and talk more about them in the future.
All things are possible if we work on them together. Much of our initial financial success in 2010 and 2011 proves that to be the case.
I love Oneonta the way it is, but I know that we can – and should – make things even better in our own lifetime and for those who come after us. Simply hoping that we can survive without things getting worse is a breach of our responsibility to the future.
In the Dec. 26, 2010 New York Times, Thomas L. Friedman, author of “The World is Flat,” quoted Atlanta’s Mayor Kasim Reed as follows: “It is time to begin having the types of mature and honest conversations necessary to deal effectively with the new economic realities we are facing as a nation. We simply can not keep kicking the can down the road.”
Here in Upstate New York, the “new economic realities” demand our attention – and creativity. If we do not attend to them, we will compromise our ability to continue to provide essential services in anything approaching a state of “normality.”
I am confident that over the balance of my term Oneonta will be “just fine.” That’s not good enough. We have a chance to make it better and the obligation to do so.
It will be much more rewarding than “kicking the can down the road.” I look forward to continue working with all who have a stake in our community.
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