A busy night tonight, but I wanted to get a quick note out regarding last night's Merger Advisory Committee meeting that was held at the PHS Auditorium. The meeting went about as expected.
The consultants outlined several methods that they determined were feasible ways to combine the municipalities without the tax rate for the city tax payers to increase. I think the presentation actually was quite good, but I thing the committee made one fundamental mistake when they directed the consultants. The directive was to present scenarios where the tax rate for the City would not be greater than what it is today. That should have actually been a directive to ensure the tax rate for the city would be lower than it is today. I have to be honest, if the Village residents see a much lower tax rate, and the City residents stay the same, what is the point. However, if both actually see the a decrease, perhaps it would be easier for the City tax payers to see the benefit.
Yes I know that the numbers that were presented last night were made using assumptions and the only way to get real hard numbers is to to a complete, head to toe analysis of everything. The numbers used in the presentation were for operating expenses only, there was no consideration for capital expense avoidance, which could be a significant savings area.
I scanned in the presentation(PDF)(1.5) and the analysis(PDF)(4MB) documents.
http://www.pewaukeepatriot.org/article.php/20090319180640657