By ROBERT GIBSONLike any tax increase, the “Recreation Bond” deserves careful scrutiny. A tax should be for a legitimate valuable public purpose. There should be reasonable expectation the funds will be well used. And there should be no other reasonable alternative to further burdening citizen taxpayers. The Public School and UNM-LA mill levies in January were among the rare tax proposals that satisfy these three criteria (link). This one does not.
“More recreation facilities” sounds good. What we really need is a different mix of recreational venues. We keep adding new ones, but rarely prune those no longer well utilized. Our demographics have changed. We have fewer young people, the biggest users. Sadly, physical activity is less per person, too. And tastes are more diverse. Baseball, softball, tennis, and golf are not nearly as popular as they were half a century ago. Yet, we build and maintain facilities as though they were. Build a new ice rink and keep the old one? Let’s get real.
Would the bond funds be well used? Most recent county facilities have been “gold-plated” – unnecessarily large, inefficient, and overpriced. We have no basis to think these would be any different. The fact that all would be designed and built at more or less the same time makes it even less likely each project would get proper scrutiny. It is frustrating to visit other communities – many with far fewer resources than ours – and their very nice, but much less costly, facilities.
The County government has other sources to pay for these proposed facilities. Its general fund revenues are about $60M per year. We have just been through another year’s budget hearings with no effective attention paid to prioritizing on-going activities and reducing or eliminating those of minimal benefit. As usual, there was no scrutiny of “costs of doing business,” including the County’s internal processes and bureaucracy.
Ironically, some councilors do recognize value in critically examining public budgets – if it isn’t their own. Some sentiment was expressed during budget hearings that the Utilities Dept. should examine its costs before raising utility charges. Council should apply that philosophy to general county operations before it pushes for another property tax increase. (Remember, we had a nearly identical hike two years ago; no public vote involved.)
Pressure should be on Council to better manage the dollars the County already has, not on taxpayers to give it more. A “no” vote need not stop the proposed projects. Forty percent of the funding ($13.5M) already exists. With that and some serious prioritizing and real economizing by the County government, we could have what we truly need – without adding the proposed Recreational Bond to our tax and debt burden.
