Mayor’s Budget addresses public safety funding and promises 43 more police officers
Mayor R.T. Rybak presented his recommended 2007 Minneapolis city budget, with revenues/ expenses totaling $1.3 billion, to the City Council on August 15 in front of an overflow crowd of residents, local elected officials, advisory boards and commissions appointees, and business and community interest group representatives. Rybak noted that his budget will result in 43 additional police officers in 2007, an action that will restore the Minneapolis Police Department to its 2002 level (before the severe state of Minnesota-imposed cuts to Local Government Aid).
“The most powerful tool in any crime fighting strategy is to put more police officers on the street,” Rybak said. “By adding police officers, we will return to a police force of 893 sworn officers…a significant achievement considering we did that in spite of a slowed economy, the end of federal public safety funding and $30 million less from the state.” The Mayor pointed to $191.5 million in public safety spending in his proposed budget, focusing on crime prevention, protecting livability and increasing accountability and results. Rybak proposed $725,000 for youth violence prevention and $2 million for public safety technology.
Following the budget presentation the City Council then adopted, without debate, a resolution to receive and file the Mayor’s proposed 2007 budget. Ryback said, “As a result of our commitment to pay off the credit card, we have reduced our debt by $80 million, which means we have $7.6 million more to spend every year on public safety.” He credited city officials’ fiscal discipline for positioning the city to address serious budget problems that relate to the need for property tax reform to bring relief for residential taxpayers, the need for pensions reform, the need to address competitiveness in view of the city’s wage policies, ongoing loss of about $30 million in state Local Government Aid, and historic under-funding of capital infrastructure, parks and libraries.
Among Rybak’s initiatives cited in the proposed budget: hire homelessness prevention outreach workers; expand and improve coordination of graffiti removal, enforcement and education; expand efforts to improve or demolish blighted and problem properties; develop a “Safe Passage to Schools” initiative to work with neighborhoods and schools on strategies to get kids to walk to school safely; build two more skate parks to help keep kids busy during the summer; create a police department operations administrator to improve efficiency and effectiveness in the MPD, allowing police leadership to focus on crime-fighting strategy; expand “Results Minneapolis” program that tracks outcomes and results; and open the new Minneapolis 311 phone system on weekends to relieve pressure off 911 operators.
Rybak defended the city against critics, stating that he would match the city vs. state spending any time. A budget slide-show presentation revealed that Minneapolis spending increased 9 percent from 2003-2006, compared to a 14 percent increase at the state level. Rybak also sounded a note of caution regarding decertification of pre-1979 Tax-Increment Finance (TIF) districts. While the increased tax capacity from these districts will be returned to the city’s tax rolls, “It’s bad news for the city government,” Rybak said, “because the state formula for Local Government Aid penalizes us for bringing on these buildings. The net effect is that, in just a few years, tax increment decertification will cost the city government $6.1 million annually in lost local government aid.” Possible extension of the TIF districts as a means to fund the NRP was raised in the April 2006 report of the Policy Board’s Task Force on the Continuation of NRP.
In his closing comments, the Mayor challenged all residents to step up. Rybak said, “In a city where so many things are going right, we know we are up to the task. And when we succeed, Minneapolis can take its rightful place as the great city of our time. We should settle for nothing less.”
See the Mayor’s budget recommendation speech and presentation slides at www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/mayor/. Find the 2007 Minneapolis budget document info at www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/city-budget/2007recommended/index.asp.