Councils deserve credit for though budget decisions

By Bill Erin

Thursday, Jan. 22, 2009 | midnight

There should be a National City Council Day on the order of National Secretary Day or National Take Your Kids to Work Day. A day on which we take time to sympathize with our City Council members and maybe pat them on the head and say, "There, there, it'll be all right."

Right now city councils all over the country, as well as state, county and federal legislators, are going through difficult times facing budget crunches. There just isn't enough income for all the programs and personnel that blossomed during the recent cycle of prosperity we enjoyed.

Boulder City, as pointed out by City Manager Vicki Mayes at the recent budget meeting of the City Council, is better off than most, because we didn't indulge in the free and unbridled growth of the Las Vegas Valley. Our controlled growth policies, while many of us complain about the stinginess of the voters at times, kept us from going overboard.

Mayes called the budget meeting because she saw the red flags waving brightly ahead and wanted to set parameters for the coming year. She wanted to get some feeling and direction from the City Council on how to proceed with her recommendations.

Mayes unloaded suggested program and personnel cuts on the City Council that left them shaking their heads in frustration. We just had a similar scenario with our governor and his budget projections.

Council members seemed particularly upset at recommendations to cut certain jobs, terminate contract workers and reduce the number and/or hours of part-timers.

Mayes explained that she had already, by not replacing some employees who had left or retired, reduced the city staff.

Two of the council members returned to an idea they had proposed at last year's budget meetings. They suggested eliminating the position of public information officer and dumping the work onto another employee on a part-time basis.

They contended that other small cities in Nevada didn't have a PIO and they didn't feel that the work was necessary. Since a major part of the PIO's job is to inform the voters of what's going on in city government and make it more transparent, and since the two members in question, Linda Strickland and Travis Chandler, are proponents of a more open and transparent government, it's difficult to see the logic here.

To be honest, I have the position of PIO for American Legion Post 31, so I may be somewhat prejudiced on the side of its relevance. Of course, mine is a volunteer job with no pay, so no one suggests terminating it.

It's one of those jobs where the results are difficult to quantify, but there is definitely an important source of public information missing without it. The argument that other small towns don't have it is not valid in Boulder City. We have a lot that other small towns don't have and don't have a lot that other small towns in Nevada do have, such as casinos and brothels.

Code enforcement officer and Bootleg Canyon trailmaster were contract jobs recommended for elimination. Code enforcement will be easy to quantify, and trailmaster was more than justified by Parks and Recreation Director Roger Hall. PIO work, however, is more esoteric and entails a large variety of activities spanning the entire range of city government. It's hard to believe someone not experienced in media work could accomplish all this in spare time.

The City Council will have to make these tough decisions in the near future, however, including voter-antagonistic recommendations to charge fees for recreation activities, increase fees and rates for city services, flat-line revenues, etc., etc.

The only reason you may not sympathize with council members is that they wanted these jobs and ran city-wide campaigns to get them.

Bill Erin is a Boulder City News columnist.