Topic: Simonson Refuses to Lay Anyone off!
started by: Paul Harvey
Posted by Paul Harvey on Jan. 14 2005,8:08 am
Check this out."Cost Hikes for Albert Lea Citizens Watch video
Updated: 01-13-2005 07:29:05 PM
(KAAL) -- Albert Lea residents and business owners are about to shoulder a significant new financial burden. Monthly bills will go up considerably to fund new storm water and lighting utilities. But 6 NEWS FIRST reporter Mark Johnson explains that the Chamber of Commerce and concerned citizens are proposing what they believe is a fairer way to come up with the money. According to Albert Lea's City Manager, formation of new storm water and lighting utilities are necessary to make needed improvements.
Victoria Simonson, Albert Lea City Manager said, "We've had a request from the watershed district to increase our street-sweeping efforts so less debris goes into the lakes and to do that takes manpower and more equipment. We've also had several infrastructure projects."
Beginning in March, residential customers will see their bills go up nearly 7 dollars a month to pay for storm water and lighting utilities- significantly more for business and industry. The city says a number of factors make the hikes necessary, including State revenue cuts, expected Federal mandates and a reduction in fees paid to the city for recreation and other services.
"There's about $600,000 in revenue tied up between these 2 utilities and if those are cut, it would mean cutting our general fund that much further. We would have to look at staff cuts when you look at those types of numbers."
City management has received a tremendous amount of public comment regarding the future utility bill increases. The chamber of commerce has joined in the protest, suggesting that citizens contact council representatives to voice their displeasure. The chamber suggests that monthly fee increases are unfair, especially to small home and property owners and that assessments should be based on property values. The chamber also believes the current system is detrimental to businesses both prospective and established.
Marjory Hamersly, Executive Director, Chamber of Commerce said, "we have some businesses that are very upset about the cost because they feel they're being assessed for something- especially the sewer water- that's ending up on their property but is coming from a number of other properties."
The vice president of Albert Lea's Alamco manufacturing-, which is looking at paying $35-hundred dollars in fees-, is among those favoring the property tax proposal.
John Forman, Vice President, Alamco said, "Some of the downtown businesses are actually the largest area that's paved so it's probably the largest user of the storm sewer but this fee is the same as somebody that has 39 acres like we are on a per-acre business."
Because the current year's budget is already set, any change would not be forthcoming until 2006. City council is expected to consider different options for funding storm water and lighting during a work session next Thursday."
It's all because Simonson and the government can't lay even one person off! Look how business must do it...
"Alliant Energy workers laid off"
In an official statement Alliant said, quote: "The decision will not impact the quality of customer service in the Minnesota-IPL Electric service area. Our employees will continue to focus on safety and providing safe, reliable and environmentally sound service.”
Posted by LardStacker on Jan. 14 2005,8:23 am
Has anybody in the history of Albert Lea ever tried to trim some fat out of the budget? If so, who was it.
Posted by Paul Harvey on Jan. 14 2005,11:50 am
The only one I've seen is county commissioner Belshan and you will recall how he gets ganged up on by the "gang of four".And of course you will recall how the county adminstrator "Gabe" smashed his tape recorder.
Some people just don't like it when cost saving measures are proposed.
Posted by ICU812 on Jan. 14 2005,12:12 pm
One thought I had the other night was the city says the wastewater department has lost x amount in 2002 x amount in 2003 and x amount in 2004. How does it lose money? Who is getting the say $500,000 it lost one year? If it is losing money someone is getting that money, where does it go to? Instead of creating these user fees have the engineers looked into why it costs so much to get rid of rainwater? Or am I cracked for not knowing?
Posted by Alfy Packer on Jan. 14 2005,1:43 pm
The plant was designed for a minumum as well as a maximum capacity. When the community uses less than what was designed to be its minumum load the plant continues to operated at minumum load. Not all expense can vary with load. Dead towns can be very expensive to operate.
Posted by usmcr on Jan. 14 2005,1:47 pm
remember she must run the city like a business. thats all good and well but remember when some fool hardy cocearn dumped a whole buch of molybdenum down the sewer. if i remember it cost the city $100,000 to clean it up. why not pass this cost back to the perpertrator? i find it hard to believe that they did not know what they were doing. if the city is hard up for cash now they were then as well! 
Posted by Fighting Yeti on Jan. 14 2005,2:43 pm
| Quote (usmcr @ Jan. 14 2005,1:47,pm) |
| remember she must run the city like a business. |
The first thing a business would do is cut costs. She doesn't seem to understand that.
Posted by LardStacker on Jan. 15 2005,12:00 am
I heard that waste water had 30% excess capacity and 500K shortfall in revenue because of the loss of Farmland Foods. Again, less chemicals, less labor, less work, who is responsible for reducing the cost of running waste water in Albert Lea. No one. put this grand plan together for raising our (storm sewer) taxes, and Ms. Victoria is going to ram it home. Ouch.Madona
Posted by Paul Harvey on Jan. 15 2005,12:27 am
Not if we can help it. NOW is the time to bother your councilman and complain about these excessive and unfair taxes disguised as fees.
Posted by southside on Jan. 15 2005,4:03 pm
I recently talked to a councilman, and if this tax does not go through, there will be no new capital improvements this year.People on this board talk about a better city, but nobody wants to pay for anything. This city has a lot of citizens who are negative about our community and reaaly are against everything. People if we want to better this community, Why don't we look at the big picture, not what it will cost us now but what are the rewards of this..
I have seen city budgets there is not much to cut thanks to our state government. The state put it more in the locals hands. He did not take it away to just be gone, it was taken away for the cities to deal with.
Posted by Paul Harvey on Jan. 15 2005,4:14 pm
We should of thought of that before we blew the farm on a $40,000,000 courthouse.
Posted by southside on Jan. 15 2005,5:17 pm
"All the negativity that is in this town s++ks" Rick PitinoThe courthouse did not bring about all the peoples negativity. We as citizens have to right this ship as best we can as individuals.
Posted by Liberal on Jan. 15 2005,5:55 pm
The main reason people are complaining about this tax is because it's unfair. According to the county tax records, my city taxes will increase over 150% and that huge house across from Edgewater park will see an increase of around 5% if they enact this rain and dark tax. Why should my city taxes increase 30 times more than his for the same rain?
Posted by LardStacker on Jan. 15 2005,7:41 pm
| Quote |
| The courthouse did not bring about all the peoples negativity. |
Your so right Southside, people on this forum are too negative.
| Quote |
| We as citizens have to right this ship as best we can as individuals. |
Your so right again Southside. The first thing we need to do is throw the thieving captain off this pirate ship.
Jessica
Posted by irisheyes on Jan. 16 2005,8:48 am
| Quote (southside @ Jan. 15 2005,4:03,pm) |
| I recently talked to a councilman, and if this tax does not go through, there will be no new capital improvements this year. People on this board talk about a better city, but nobody wants to pay for anything. |
If you got this impression from the councilman that you talked to, my guess is that it's one of the council members that thinks the city should spend its way into prosperity. Unfortunately, I don't think it works that way.
You don't think anymore cuts are possible? I do. Why is it that even though the population is steadily decreasing, we still require the same, if not more city employees?
| Quote |
| People if we want to better this community, Why don't we look at the big picture, not what it will cost us now but what are the rewards of this.. |
So we shouldn't look at what things will cost us now? That doesn't sound fiscally responsible. What are the rewards? Think about that... What are the rewards for overspending? Bankruptcy! Not prosperity through new taxes. That is the big picture, because businesses and residents thinking about moving consider these things important when they make a decision of where to go.
Posted by Alfy Packer on Jan. 16 2005,10:21 am
Let's see, we've gotten a 2nd city manager, and created a new HR position in the last year. The second city manager is payed $90,000, the same as the other one who we move off to do 1/2 of the job he was doing. The second city manager who is doing the other 1/2 of the job that was being done by one person before, needed the new HR position, cutting her job to lets say 1/4 of the job the one person was doing before. O' ya, and we had to staff that new HR job twice since creating it earlier this summer.Why we are going to need a new city hall to put all these people in who are doing 1/4 of the job they use to do. Now I can see why we need to find some way to tax all the churches in town, but spare the golf clubs.
I think we should thank Mayor Jean, and her clone for this great vision they are bringing to our community. And just think, it is so politically correct that we can't afford it.
Posted by MADDOG on Jan. 16 2005,10:34 am
OH, that was right straight to the gut. 
How 'bout a shot at some county workers. I'd enjoy that more. Let's not cut to the chase and leave no man out!
Posted by LardStacker on Jan. 16 2005,10:52 am
We should get rid of the Harbor Master before he pays Ron H. another $40K to sell the old school for $2, then move the library down to the old Walmart. It would give kids a awesome place to hang out at. “The Megalibrary”
Posted by Paul Harvey on Jan. 16 2005,11:15 am
The trouble is in how the system is set up.There's no incentive for anyone in government to save. That may mean cutting their freinds jobs or possibly slowing their expansion into better paying positions. No one gets rewarded for keeping costs down. One gets rewarded by getting the public to fork over an ever increasing amount of their income to government. But this hurts growth by removing money from the marketplace. Every dollar Simonson wants from you will be money kept from the free market. Less money for businesses to thrive on. 1 dollar turns to 7 in the free market.
Posted by Expatriate on Jan. 16 2005,3:04 pm
Most Cities lose money in their Public works section like sewer and water it costs a bundle to upgrade and keep these things up to snuff.But like street, park, police, library and other sections of city government there things we need to make A.L. a great place to live.
Other communities have Public Utilities that own power plants and run gas departments line crews that's where the money is made to support the other utilities. In Albert lea you stuff your check in a envelope and send it to Iowa where Alliant makes the profit.
It costs about one million dollars a megawatt to build a power plant,
Hmmm lets see 40 for the court house 30 for the school that's 70 million.well that's a 70 megawatt power plant. A city the size of Albert lea would use about 30 megs in the winter 40 in the summer that leaves you a good 30 megs to sell on the open market.
While we're at it lets give charter cable the boot and get a high speed Internet connection and cable TV service run by the city for a reasonable price the same city line crews that service the power lines can service the cable. This would provide many good paying jobs reduce taxes for all and we'd have money for a library and a downtown revitalization project maybe we could even clean up that lower lake.
It would also attract new industry a reliable source of power at a reasonable rate is a factor in locating factories. We've all seen what deregulation of electricity did to California those cities without the ability to generate electricity got nailed to the cross.
What I'm proposing would cost far more then 70 million, but you have to make an investment to get a return.
Posted by Alfy Packer on Jan. 16 2005,3:09 pm
"Harbor Master", I like that, dam I like that alot!As for super realitor, Mr. "H", who would be dumb enough to pay him another $40,000 to move it again for $2. Only a governmental body would have the balls to do that. Ron will have to wait for the port authority to declair it worthless for that to happen again.
Posted by hairhertz on Jan. 16 2005,3:44 pm
Many years ago while working for a government entity, we were instructed to order our supplies through an outfit in the Twin Cities. One day I was in a local business supply office and noticed that its catelog was the same as the Twin Cities outfit. Yup, the local business said that it was and that he'd be happy to give me a discount for buying locally. 30% discount. My boss reprimanded me when he discovered what I was doing. When I told him that we were saving a decent amount of money, that we were buying locally & we could get our stuff immediately, he replied that it wasn't that much of a savings and that I'd better get with the program or lose my job.
Another employee told me that the bosses got "presents" such as nice cameras from the Twin Cities outfit each year as tokens of appreciation for doing business with them. Hmmm, guess that was better than saving money and doing business locally. So much for spending tax dollars wisely.
When these "entities" are audited, I suspect dealings like this would show up only as line expenses. Has anyone ever done a detailed analysis of local government agency spending? Same thing would apply to United Way and CVB?
Posted by Alfy Packer on Jan. 16 2005,5:05 pm
The gifts get sent to the guys home. Who is the wiser? It is called spif and it is an old and durty problem that is very hard to prove.
Posted by OEF_Soldier on Jan. 16 2005,8:21 pm
Why don't you folks take these ideas to the knuckleheads that are currently serving as your council members? Seems to me that if you start hammering them with ideas from the people they serve then you have a reason to boot their lazy butts out and put someone else in. If they are not willing to listen to you then force the issue with them. Y'all gotta quit worrying about what may happen to you if you start making a fuss and just DO IT. It is easy to sit here and complain as a semi anonymous poster. I say semi anonymous because some of y'all do actually know each other. However once again this is only a FORUM. A place to post your complaints and your praise in such a way that you don't have to fear any sort of retribution by those whom you complain about in a post. This forum will not garner the changes WE desire without all of you doing something in the arena of reality. KATN should be the motto y'all adopt and follow. Rock this city to it's very foundation and create that change you desire.p/s - KATN = KICK A$$ TAKE NAMES
Posted by MADDOG on Jan. 16 2005,8:55 pm
Just got to as ask you. Just how long you've lived here. In this community, we suck off the blood of others.Last fall, myself, Liberal and and large portion of this forum strove to make change in this county. Hell, Liberal even ran for office. But, no, there wasn't enough support to get him elected, nor a couple of other people. Where were the people then. There are far too few people out here that are willing to actually stand up to our elelcted offials and way too many that can stand behind things like this forum, speak and do nothing. At home, behind their shutters? Sorry, I.m dragging this on.
Come on, people; take part in city/county government. Lookinig for me at the next county board meeting? I'll be over standing at the windows next to Roger Bok.
I invite anybody t o stop and see me.Any takers?
Posted by Alfy Packer on Jan. 16 2005,9:35 pm
Most of the people in office think of this forum as a pain in the ass, and the people who post here as much worse. That goes for Jean Eaton, Victoria Simonson, Gabe... and the list goes on and on. Now each of them will act like they do not know that the dam thing exists, but occationally you will here them talk about it. They use it to judge if some screw-up they have committed has past over or not. They talk poorly of those who express their opinions on it, as though no one civilized would have anything to do with it.Vic, Jean, Gabe and others, I just wanted you to know that I've not just over heard you. It is a little sick, your I'm better than them additude. You aren't that privilaged.
Posted by Paul Harvey on Jan. 17 2005,8:36 am
Not only aren't they better than me...they're worse than me. I don't tax the rain, lie, break tape recorders, restrict free speech and steal from stores...
Posted by tomcat on Jan. 17 2005,1:55 pm
Ya, it's sad when a public forum is suppose to be to help the community be a better community. But when the officials use it as a spy center for what's going on in the community, shame on them. We still need to be on our toes or that $1 will be .50cents soon or maybe instead of $90k they'll be up to $100k for that incredible job their doing.