Who's on first? Banning Council
members or Banning folks?
By Gail Paparian
For the Record Gazette
I made it a point to take a nap during the day so I
could be fresh and alert to watch the Banning City Council meeting of March
25th. There were several agenda items I wanted to see how council handled.
Remember, the five folks sitting up there make a substantial number of
decisions that affect the lives of everybody who lives in Banning. As Bette
Davis said, “Better buckle up. It's going to be a bumpy ride.”
I just about got a migraine listening to the audio from the “new” council
chambers. It kept clicking in and out, so it's possible I got the wrong
impression as I listened to several hours of council discussion. I hope they
have an extended warranty on the audio, because it was terrible.
Early on, Fred Sakurai queried about the petition circulating throughout
town about once again dividing Banning into voting districts. It's a
terrible idea. It is poorly written. The petitioner, Bill Franklin says
terribly mean and incorrect things about Sun Lakes. It's also bad
governance. More on this in other columns.
Councilperson Debbie Franklin, who has no relation to Bill Franklin, was
involved in previous attempts to divide Banning into voting wards. From her
position on the dais, she disavowed any association with the current
petition.
Councilperson Bob Botts pulled an item from the consent agenda and commented
that while looking through the warrants, he did not see any recent bill from
the city's attorneys, Burke, Williams and Sorenson.
Julie Biggs, senior
partner in the firm, responded by saying, “We decided not to bill you any
more.” I guess Ms. Biggs has read my previous columns about the sizable fees
the attorneys were charging the city ($197,000 in one month).
If this is a firm contract offer from Ms. Biggs, which
set of attorneys will review the contract proposal and at what cost?
Biggs responded to questions about why the city
attorneys were processing a citizen petition. She indicated the city (via
the city clerk) has a ministerial duty to prepare the ballot title and
summary. She did indicate that there were some inadequacies. She didn't
indicate what. She also didn't indicate how much the city was billed to
perform this service. Stay tuned.
I believe it was about a year ago when the Banning
City Council unanimously voted to establish a regional approach to public
transportation with the City of Beaumont. “Pass Transit”- it is called.
In their infinite wisdom, or lack thereof, staff
and council members of Banning voted against joining with the consultant
hired by the City of Beaumont. I don't know the exact reason, but if it was
the company that dropped Mayor Salas and I off in the middle of a parking
lot and then took off ... it does make sense.
What does not make
sense is both cities hiring their own consultants. Sure, each city has its
own needs but what this means is that each city will have separate leaders,
separate administration staff, separate buses, separate Dial-A-Rides and
probably a bit of mass confusion rather than mass transportation.
Do we have to have a “color war” on both sides of
Highland Springs where Beaumont chooses a color for their bus and so does
Banning. What happens to “PASS transportation? In
the divorce, does one city get the “P” and the other city gets the “ASS?”
How do we ever expect to even mention the “R” word
as its regional cooperation when two adjacent cities won't even sit at the
same table? I cannot believe that intelligent minds couldn't come up with a
workable compromise. Shame.
Shame.
After the council finished sufficiently
murking up the waters, they then proceeded to a
lightning rod of an issue: whether to finance phase 2 of the services of
polling/research firm for another $47,000. This “education” phase would poll
the voters about how they felt about imposing certain taxes on themselves.
Here's
the incredibly irony: Each council member in his/her own way disassociated
him/herself from imposing any tax on current residents. The council was
unanimous in distancing themselves from taxing the people, so they just
authorized another $47,000 to tell us what we already know!
Somebody mentioned that the City of Redlands had
done a top to bottom inventory of their expenses and discretionary spending
before the “tax” word ever came up. Councilmember Machisic, usually the
espouser of fiscal conservancy and planning down the road for 10 to 20
years, blew my mind when he said we were nothing like Redlands.
We weren't going (immediately) broke. This isn't a
fiscal emergency like it was with Redlands and Bonnie Johnson, financial
director, says we could have a problem in 2010-2011? HUH?
If the City of Banning is “upside down” by about a
million dollars per year, why would we take three to four years to stop the
bleeding?
While Councilmember Bob Botts, the most business
savvy member of the council, said he couldn't look residents directly in the
eye and ask them to tax themselves before exhausting every process, even he
went on to talk about various forms of taxes the consultant should bring up
during their $47,000 education phase.
I think the council may have forgotten that there
is probably a phase 3. That's where “information pieces” are created and
generated and sent out to the public. These 4-color babies don't come cheap
either. There's layout, production and mailing. How much will this cost the
people of the city to tell them that their council doesn't want to tax them?
Unless this information is brought forward in
closed session, out of view of the public taxpayer/voter, I have yet to see
Bonnie Johnson asked to prepare an internal audit to see what could be
trimmed from the city budget.
This city has a history of hiring consultants,
usually in the $75,000-$125,000 range per incident and yielding no return on
investment. Too many of the studies are now obsolete as they languish on
shelves - unused, unread and ultimately useless. HAS THE CITY DONE AN
INTERNAL AUDIT TO SEE WHAT CAN BE SAVED?
Until that is done, why have we just spent another
$100,000 to find out how to tax residents?
The city council has authorized paying
Godbe/Tramutola to poll residents about how they
would respond to bringing the Transit Occupancy Tax (TOT) to a level that
most other cities charge (10-14%). A few years ago, some less than brilliant
minds lowered Banning's to 6%. Dumb.
Dumber.Dumbest.
Bringing Banning's
fees to a reasonable level would yield about $520,000 per year. Visitors in
hotels and motels would pay the fee just like we all do when we travel. Cut
out some of the consultants and reduce the legal fees and it looks like
we've just saved about a million bucks a year.
My fee: Love of Community. Let's get real for a
change. We've got an election in November. Please look, listen, observe,
then vote informed including once and for all eliminating any thoughts of
slicing Banning up into voting districts. I don't care where my
councilperson resides as long as he/she cares about the entire city -not
just his/her own district.
Gail and her husband Bill Paparian created a
service called Writing Solutions in 1996. Gail has also written for a number
of local and national magazines and newspapers over the years.
Currently, she provides public relations
consulting services for the Banning Unified School District. She can be
reached at
info@WritingSolutions.com.
