Public forum by dictionary definition is “any meeting place where an open discussion and earnest conversation can be had on issues concerning the community or its people.” The mayor’s definition of the public forum at a City Council meeting is one topic and three minutes of input, no answers, no response, just public input. How do you feel about having so little say in how your tax dollars are being spent and the direction in which the city is being taken? If you were to question this procedure, you would be told you can contact city administration, the mayor or your councilman. The problem with trying to make that sort of contact is those conversations are private, not public, and the answers you are given are hard to verify.

I have stated this many times, but what you are being told and what is really going on behind the scenes are not always the same. Lines are being blurred on how money is budgeted, moved around and spent to give a favorable forecast in one area or another. You will be told the same thing about collaborations with other non-government entities within the city — such as, how much more convenient it will be for the public and how much taxpayer money can be saved if we just work together.   I guarantee you that almost every story you read about in the paper or hear on the news, has a lot more to it than what you are being told.

Your property tax dollars are broken down by percentages and fund different areas. For example, so much goes to the city, county, school district and so forth. So now, if you combine an entity from the city with an entity from the school district, that should make your taxes go down, right? How many of you believe that will happen, especially if the lines of whose spending how much in tax dollars and on what, gets blurred in the process.

Try and pin down city officials on the numbers they throw around and where they got them from for current or future projects. It is virtually impossible because they will point their finger at almost anything or anyone else. A lot of the time the blame will be placed on a study that the city payed thousands of dollars for. Then the answer becomes “Well that’s what the study said, but we can look into it and possibly find a more favorable outcome.”

The city’s real estate and property management department needs new personnel! We cannot continue to overpay for property they think we need and then give away the farm when things don’t work out the way they planned. I would like to know which real estate ventures the city has been involved in that have actually benefited the taxpayers who are funding all of these misguided purchases.

The virtues we need in our leaders to create an atmosphere of success are ethics, integrity, honesty and respect.

 

Gary Hagen

Albert Lea