06
Jan
2004
On December 18, Bettendorf Mayor-Elect Mike Freemire eloquently defended the new fee system for garbage collection that the city council had passed two days earlier.
On December 26, he backtracked, making a motion and voting for a measure that essentially rescinded that earlier decision.
The quick about-face had to be an embarrassment to Freemire, who represented Bettendorf's 5th Ward before he became mayor. His campaign platform stressed open city government, yet here he was, along with most of the city council, the object of public scorn for not getting enough public input on the solid-waste proposal.
"The atmosphere of any organization starts at the top," he told the River Cities' Reader on December 18. "You do this by saying, 'I'm available.'" This is done by "creating a framework where people will feel comfortable talking with the mayor, with the economic-development director."
That sounds good, but the garbage fiasco demonstrates that while Freemire says the right things, it remains to be seen how those words will translate into policy and results for the city and its citizens.
Now, just a few days into his four-year term, Freemire and the rest of the Bettendorf city council are left to grapple with how to pay for garbage collection, an expected deficit of $1.9 million for its next fiscal year, and the likelihood that the state legislature is going to add to that amount by again taking money away from municipalities.
That's certainly enough to test Freemire's mettle, and attitude alone won't get him very far.
The Trouble with Trash
In praising the new garbage-collection system, Freemire raised many sensible points. The sticker system the city had used for nearly a decade didn't cover the costs of garbage pickup and recycling, he said. Bettendorf's two annual bulky-waste cleanup weeks cost $60,000 to $70,000 each, and result in people bringing waste into the city. A task force - with community representatives appointed by each city-council member - and a consultant studied the issue and recommended the proposal that the council eventually passed.
There was one problem: That new system more than tripled the annual fee that households pay, from about $4 a month to $12.
Freemire and other council members knew that citizens wouldn't be happy, but they didn't have a sense of how angry they would be. Freemire, the owner of Signature Lawns, even had harsh words for outgoing Mayor Ann Hutchinson, who criticized the council for the new system. "She has been absent from the political process since November 4," Freemire said, referring to the date he defeated Hutchinson, who served for 16 years. "To stand up at the 11th hour when you've been absent from the process, I find rather difficult to take."
He also faulted fellow council member Rosemary Gordy. "Rosemary voted 'no' without a solution," Freemire said.
But within two weeks, the city council had bowed to tremendous public pressure and re-considered its earlier vote.
Bettendorf is now without any system in place to collect money to pay for recycling and garbage collection; the old sticker system was not reinstated when the council rescinded its vote on new garbage fees. And the city isn't going to consider another garbage proposal until March at the earliest. Garbage collection and recycling cost the city about $1.4 million a year.
For years, garbage collection had been paid through a combination of sticker fees and property-tax revenue, and that didn't become a problem until the budget crunch that has hit most municipalities in the past few years.
In March 2003, Bettendorf raised the rate for its annual garbage stickers from $31.20 to $50.
But even that hike in fees left a $650,000 gap between the fee collected for garbage and recycling and the costs of the programs.
So when the Iowa legislature took back $570,000 from Bettendorf after the city had already certified its property taxes, the city council saw the similarity in numbers and decided to try to make the garbage and recycling programs pay for themselves. Hence: tripling the garbage fee and moving to an automated system in which workers wouldn't have to pick up the cans.
Hutchinson complained that there had been no public input into the garbage-fee proposal, but Freemire bristled at that assertion. While there was no public hearing, "there was a public process," he said, including reports from the consultant and task force and public representation on the task force.
"The goal was to try to ... make it self-funded," said Decker Ploehn, Bettendorf's city administrator. The plan was also designed to shift the cost of garbage pickup from property taxpayers - including businesses, which don't generally use city garbage service - to users, and to give the city maximum flexibility to deal with anticipated budget issues.
But the public deluged the city with calls, and the council quickly backtracked. The city now has five public meetings scheduled - January 7, 8, 13, 15, and 21 - to discuss the garbage issue, and the city council will probably consider what comes out of that process on March 1 and 2, at the same meetings it will consider a budget.
"My hope would be that we don't go back to square one," Ploehn said. "We've had a consultant and a task force who've told us there's a lot of benefit to an automated system."
It's for that reason that these public meetings are going to be both listening and education sessions. The city will certainly do its best to explain the garbage-fee hike in terms that will appease citizens. Ploehn said much of the anger he has heard is misplaced. "They're paying for it today" through property taxes and stickers, he said. "We're just moving money."
That's not exactly true. Citizens are paying for it today, but they're not going to get their property taxes lowered if garbage costs are shifted exclusively to fees. That property-tax money will be used for another purpose - dealing with the budget shortfall so property taxes don't get raised.
A key component of the plan is ensuring maximum flexibility in the city budget. If the city chooses to pay for garbage through a property-tax increase, it will eat into the $1.20 that the city has before it reaches the $8.10 property-tax-levy cap. And given the current fiscal situation of the State of Iowa, that room under the cap could become critical. "In my mind, they [legislators] are coming again," Ploehn said.
In addition, Ploehn said, a home will pay $11 or $12 a month for private garbage service, so what the city is asking residents to pay is not outlandish. "We're right in the ballpark on costs," he said.
Still, he and Freemire are willing to listen.
"Maybe folks come up with a better idea," Freemire said.
Ploehn said he's already gotten some comments from citizens that raise good points. For example, an annual-fee-based system does nothing to encourage recycling, and it also makes people pay the same fee no matter how much they throw away. "People really want a component for people who generate very little garbage," Ploehn said.
That might result in a combination revenue structure, with a base fee charged to all residents and additional fees based on the amount of garbage a household generates, most likely determined by the size cans the household uses.
Of course, the end result is probably still going to be a major increase in garbage fees, and city officials would be naïve to expect that a more-public process will do much to relieve anger about a fee hike. "We're going to have people who still say no," Freemire said.
Not Business as Usual
The garbage and budget issues the city will face in the coming months will detract attention from what Freemire wants to do in terms of business development. The City of Bettendorf, he argued, has not put many resources into economic development, and it hasn't developed a plan for downtown development. Because of those things, the business climate in Bettendorf is poor.
Freemire said he wants to have a downtown plan in place in his first year. "Bettendorf has never had a [traditional] downtown [business district], so it's a five- to 10-year deal," he said.
The mayor also envisions roundtable discussions between the city and business owners facilitated by the Bettendorf Chamber of Commerce to improve the relationship. He said that because the chamber has an existing relationship with businesses, the forum might be less adversarial.
Scott Tunnicliff, president and CEO of the Bettendorf Chamber of Commerce, said his organization, working with the city, plans to start a monthly downtown-business roundtable in February to "identify barriers to investment and craft solutions."
The city and the business community have communicated, he said, but those conversations have not been frequent or "thorough" enough. In 1998, he said, businesses were invited to look at the plan the city was developing for downtown, but they weren't apprised of the situation as the development deal fell apart. And while the debate over what to do with the Interstate 74 bridge has been open, business owners have formed their opinions with limited facts. Without regular contact with the city - such as a month-to-month update on projects - "people start to draw their own conclusions," Tunnicliff said. A monthly roundtable might be able to rectify that, he added.
Making Bettendorf more hospitable to businesses is one of Freemire's top priorities. And as with other areas, Freemire thinks it all starts with the mayor: "You need to build momentum, but before you build momentum, you need to build enthusiasm. It all comes down to attitude, how willing you are to work the art of the deal."
He cites the example of Russell Construction, which opted for a new Davenport location over Bettendorf. "For lack of an enthusiastic 'What can we do for you?' those people are not here," Freemire said. "They need to feel that the investment they're making makes sense. They need to feel wanted."
That means a clear commitment from the city to economic development, and to the area surrounding where the business wants to locate.
Yet Freemire concedes that money and incentives play a role. "The deal was better elsewhere," Russell officials told him when he inquired about the company's choice.
Does that mean that Freemire wants Bettendorf to engage in the big business give-away, in which neighboring municipalities see who can offer the largest incentive package?
Here Freemire wants to have it both ways. On the one hand, he said, "Government is not the first place a business should go" for assistance. Furthermore, "people don't pay taxes so we can give it to businesses. They [taxes] pay for services."
Still, "we do need to allocate some resources toward economic development," he said.
But money isn't the only factor. "That does not mean that the money has to hit the table in equal proportions," he said.
Bettendorf's deal to lure Home Depot and other establishments to the Duck Creek Mall area was "a superior choice for the city," Freemire said. The deal got the developer to pay delinquent taxes and included incentives for the developer to pay future property taxes on time. And it involved no taxpayer dollars; the developer gets all incremental property taxes - over a property-value floor of $9.9 million - paid back to it.
But Freemire has his eyes on moving $1.2 million from its budgeted purpose of a performing-arts center to economic development. (The money is included in the budget of the current fiscal year.) A performing-arts center, he said, "is not the job of the city to begin with. That money needs to go toward an economic-development program."
But Ploehn said $500,000 of that comes from sales-tax revenues and must be used for a capital expense. That leaves $700,000 in gaming revenues the city could use for a purpose other than the arts center.
Here, however, the city's budget crunch comes into play, and it could hamstring efforts to increase funding to economic development.
Ploehn thinks the $700,000 is best kept in reserve in case legislators start digging in cities' pockets again this session. "I prefer to solve this problem with a garbage fee or a tax and keep the $700,000 in our hip pocket," he said. (Freemire, like many officials in Iowa municipalities, is hoping to stop the state from taking money away from his city. "Tell them to keep their hands out of our cookie jar," he said.)
Even with a tight budget, though, Freemire thinks he can make Bettendorf government more effective.
"Performance is the key to success," he said.
And how does that relate to Bettendorf's current administrative leaders? "I think I'd be talking out of school if I talk about personnel," he said. But he suggests he won't push for big changes. "The staff in Bettendorf is a really good group of dedicated people. They really, really try. There isn't this huge gap" between performance and expectations.
What has been missing is a connection between the city's goals and its budget. "Each department needs to have an expressed plan of how they're going to accomplish the goals put before them," Freemire said.
Those goals will become public later this month, he said. And for the first time, there will be a direct correlation between a department's budget and its goals, he said. In other words, Freemire is pledging that the city is going to put its money where its mouth is.
The quick about-face had to be an embarrassment to Freemire, who represented Bettendorf's 5th Ward before he became mayor. His campaign platform stressed open city government, yet here he was, along with most of the city council, the object of public scorn for not getting enough public input on the solid-waste proposal.
"The atmosphere of any organization starts at the top," he told the River Cities' Reader on December 18. "You do this by saying, 'I'm available.'" This is done by "creating a framework where people will feel comfortable talking with the mayor, with the economic-development director."
That sounds good, but the garbage fiasco demonstrates that while Freemire says the right things, it remains to be seen how those words will translate into policy and results for the city and its citizens.
Now, just a few days into his four-year term, Freemire and the rest of the Bettendorf city council are left to grapple with how to pay for garbage collection, an expected deficit of $1.9 million for its next fiscal year, and the likelihood that the state legislature is going to add to that amount by again taking money away from municipalities.
That's certainly enough to test Freemire's mettle, and attitude alone won't get him very far.
The Trouble with Trash
In praising the new garbage-collection system, Freemire raised many sensible points. The sticker system the city had used for nearly a decade didn't cover the costs of garbage pickup and recycling, he said. Bettendorf's two annual bulky-waste cleanup weeks cost $60,000 to $70,000 each, and result in people bringing waste into the city. A task force - with community representatives appointed by each city-council member - and a consultant studied the issue and recommended the proposal that the council eventually passed.
There was one problem: That new system more than tripled the annual fee that households pay, from about $4 a month to $12.
Freemire and other council members knew that citizens wouldn't be happy, but they didn't have a sense of how angry they would be. Freemire, the owner of Signature Lawns, even had harsh words for outgoing Mayor Ann Hutchinson, who criticized the council for the new system. "She has been absent from the political process since November 4," Freemire said, referring to the date he defeated Hutchinson, who served for 16 years. "To stand up at the 11th hour when you've been absent from the process, I find rather difficult to take."
He also faulted fellow council member Rosemary Gordy. "Rosemary voted 'no' without a solution," Freemire said.
But within two weeks, the city council had bowed to tremendous public pressure and re-considered its earlier vote.
Bettendorf is now without any system in place to collect money to pay for recycling and garbage collection; the old sticker system was not reinstated when the council rescinded its vote on new garbage fees. And the city isn't going to consider another garbage proposal until March at the earliest. Garbage collection and recycling cost the city about $1.4 million a year.
For years, garbage collection had been paid through a combination of sticker fees and property-tax revenue, and that didn't become a problem until the budget crunch that has hit most municipalities in the past few years.
In March 2003, Bettendorf raised the rate for its annual garbage stickers from $31.20 to $50.
But even that hike in fees left a $650,000 gap between the fee collected for garbage and recycling and the costs of the programs.
So when the Iowa legislature took back $570,000 from Bettendorf after the city had already certified its property taxes, the city council saw the similarity in numbers and decided to try to make the garbage and recycling programs pay for themselves. Hence: tripling the garbage fee and moving to an automated system in which workers wouldn't have to pick up the cans.
Hutchinson complained that there had been no public input into the garbage-fee proposal, but Freemire bristled at that assertion. While there was no public hearing, "there was a public process," he said, including reports from the consultant and task force and public representation on the task force.
"The goal was to try to ... make it self-funded," said Decker Ploehn, Bettendorf's city administrator. The plan was also designed to shift the cost of garbage pickup from property taxpayers - including businesses, which don't generally use city garbage service - to users, and to give the city maximum flexibility to deal with anticipated budget issues.
But the public deluged the city with calls, and the council quickly backtracked. The city now has five public meetings scheduled - January 7, 8, 13, 15, and 21 - to discuss the garbage issue, and the city council will probably consider what comes out of that process on March 1 and 2, at the same meetings it will consider a budget.
"My hope would be that we don't go back to square one," Ploehn said. "We've had a consultant and a task force who've told us there's a lot of benefit to an automated system."
It's for that reason that these public meetings are going to be both listening and education sessions. The city will certainly do its best to explain the garbage-fee hike in terms that will appease citizens. Ploehn said much of the anger he has heard is misplaced. "They're paying for it today" through property taxes and stickers, he said. "We're just moving money."
That's not exactly true. Citizens are paying for it today, but they're not going to get their property taxes lowered if garbage costs are shifted exclusively to fees. That property-tax money will be used for another purpose - dealing with the budget shortfall so property taxes don't get raised.
A key component of the plan is ensuring maximum flexibility in the city budget. If the city chooses to pay for garbage through a property-tax increase, it will eat into the $1.20 that the city has before it reaches the $8.10 property-tax-levy cap. And given the current fiscal situation of the State of Iowa, that room under the cap could become critical. "In my mind, they [legislators] are coming again," Ploehn said.
In addition, Ploehn said, a home will pay $11 or $12 a month for private garbage service, so what the city is asking residents to pay is not outlandish. "We're right in the ballpark on costs," he said.
Still, he and Freemire are willing to listen.
"Maybe folks come up with a better idea," Freemire said.
Ploehn said he's already gotten some comments from citizens that raise good points. For example, an annual-fee-based system does nothing to encourage recycling, and it also makes people pay the same fee no matter how much they throw away. "People really want a component for people who generate very little garbage," Ploehn said.
That might result in a combination revenue structure, with a base fee charged to all residents and additional fees based on the amount of garbage a household generates, most likely determined by the size cans the household uses.
Of course, the end result is probably still going to be a major increase in garbage fees, and city officials would be naïve to expect that a more-public process will do much to relieve anger about a fee hike. "We're going to have people who still say no," Freemire said.
Not Business as Usual
The garbage and budget issues the city will face in the coming months will detract attention from what Freemire wants to do in terms of business development. The City of Bettendorf, he argued, has not put many resources into economic development, and it hasn't developed a plan for downtown development. Because of those things, the business climate in Bettendorf is poor.
Freemire said he wants to have a downtown plan in place in his first year. "Bettendorf has never had a [traditional] downtown [business district], so it's a five- to 10-year deal," he said.
The mayor also envisions roundtable discussions between the city and business owners facilitated by the Bettendorf Chamber of Commerce to improve the relationship. He said that because the chamber has an existing relationship with businesses, the forum might be less adversarial.
Scott Tunnicliff, president and CEO of the Bettendorf Chamber of Commerce, said his organization, working with the city, plans to start a monthly downtown-business roundtable in February to "identify barriers to investment and craft solutions."
The city and the business community have communicated, he said, but those conversations have not been frequent or "thorough" enough. In 1998, he said, businesses were invited to look at the plan the city was developing for downtown, but they weren't apprised of the situation as the development deal fell apart. And while the debate over what to do with the Interstate 74 bridge has been open, business owners have formed their opinions with limited facts. Without regular contact with the city - such as a month-to-month update on projects - "people start to draw their own conclusions," Tunnicliff said. A monthly roundtable might be able to rectify that, he added.
Making Bettendorf more hospitable to businesses is one of Freemire's top priorities. And as with other areas, Freemire thinks it all starts with the mayor: "You need to build momentum, but before you build momentum, you need to build enthusiasm. It all comes down to attitude, how willing you are to work the art of the deal."
He cites the example of Russell Construction, which opted for a new Davenport location over Bettendorf. "For lack of an enthusiastic 'What can we do for you?' those people are not here," Freemire said. "They need to feel that the investment they're making makes sense. They need to feel wanted."
That means a clear commitment from the city to economic development, and to the area surrounding where the business wants to locate.
Yet Freemire concedes that money and incentives play a role. "The deal was better elsewhere," Russell officials told him when he inquired about the company's choice.
Does that mean that Freemire wants Bettendorf to engage in the big business give-away, in which neighboring municipalities see who can offer the largest incentive package?
Here Freemire wants to have it both ways. On the one hand, he said, "Government is not the first place a business should go" for assistance. Furthermore, "people don't pay taxes so we can give it to businesses. They [taxes] pay for services."
Still, "we do need to allocate some resources toward economic development," he said.
But money isn't the only factor. "That does not mean that the money has to hit the table in equal proportions," he said.
Bettendorf's deal to lure Home Depot and other establishments to the Duck Creek Mall area was "a superior choice for the city," Freemire said. The deal got the developer to pay delinquent taxes and included incentives for the developer to pay future property taxes on time. And it involved no taxpayer dollars; the developer gets all incremental property taxes - over a property-value floor of $9.9 million - paid back to it.
But Freemire has his eyes on moving $1.2 million from its budgeted purpose of a performing-arts center to economic development. (The money is included in the budget of the current fiscal year.) A performing-arts center, he said, "is not the job of the city to begin with. That money needs to go toward an economic-development program."
But Ploehn said $500,000 of that comes from sales-tax revenues and must be used for a capital expense. That leaves $700,000 in gaming revenues the city could use for a purpose other than the arts center.
Here, however, the city's budget crunch comes into play, and it could hamstring efforts to increase funding to economic development.
Ploehn thinks the $700,000 is best kept in reserve in case legislators start digging in cities' pockets again this session. "I prefer to solve this problem with a garbage fee or a tax and keep the $700,000 in our hip pocket," he said. (Freemire, like many officials in Iowa municipalities, is hoping to stop the state from taking money away from his city. "Tell them to keep their hands out of our cookie jar," he said.)
Even with a tight budget, though, Freemire thinks he can make Bettendorf government more effective.
"Performance is the key to success," he said.
And how does that relate to Bettendorf's current administrative leaders? "I think I'd be talking out of school if I talk about personnel," he said. But he suggests he won't push for big changes. "The staff in Bettendorf is a really good group of dedicated people. They really, really try. There isn't this huge gap" between performance and expectations.
What has been missing is a connection between the city's goals and its budget. "Each department needs to have an expressed plan of how they're going to accomplish the goals put before them," Freemire said.
Those goals will become public later this month, he said. And for the first time, there will be a direct correlation between a department's budget and its goals, he said. In other words, Freemire is pledging that the city is going to put its money where its mouth is.
