No Courage Here

Except for a well paid bureaucracy and a few elected officials who revel in wielding power over others, this budget will not increase happiness in the city of Racine.

The city council continues to assess fees in a cowardly attempt to hide tax increases. Fees such as the sewer lateral fees, recycling fees and fire department inspection fees, are fees that cover activities that are part and parcel to conventional government operations. Such fees are not voluntarily paid and are essentially a tax.

They are fees that are meant to hide aldermanic inability to make politically difficult choices as to what is and what is not an essential government expenditure.

More importantly, this budget reflects aldermen’s lack of courage in dealing with crafty bureaucrats and unions that demand luxurious health care plans, generous pension plans, and less than demanding work schedules for themselves and their underlings.

And if a bureaucrat can show he will cover the costs of his salary and benefits with fees and/or fines, that gets an almost automatic pass from the council.

And how much of the $1.5 million in sewer lateral “fees” actually went to homeowners. Not a single alderman asked that question during the budget process. As I recall, about a half dozen such requests would come up in a year. That is about $75,000 of the $1.5 million assessed fees, or as little as 5%, that actually goes to homeowners. The rest went to the Department of Public Works for salaries, benefits and other expenditures that should rightfully have been included in its budget and on the tax roles, subject to all the rules and regulations of levy limits.

But the council chose to take the role of a sort of tax dodger and assess constituents with fees instead. (And they complain about constituents that don’t obey the rules.)

With the alternate side parking they have intensified the “regulation and punishment” system of control over people, a proven failure in government relations with the public.

With recycling they are considering more regulations and fines. The garbage police seem to be on the horizon of this city’s future.

Never have I heard a single alderman consider the more benign system of “communication and reason,” the system used in private sector companies, by the way, with its customers, in a medium called “advertising.”

The Mayor is actually using communication and reason in his radio message regarding drug abuse. And I can assure you that he is accomplishing much more in that approach to abating drug abuse than all 200 Racine police officers with their Armadillo, Swat Teams, guns and jails ever will.

Communication is the universal solvent; it invites cooperation. The use of punishment as a means of attaining compliance does little more than build up resentment.

This budget leaves much room for improvement. The only defense of this budget lies in comparison with the budgets of other communities — whose budgets — universally — consist of similar deficiencies and abuses.