If the council enacts the initiatives as city ordinances (laws), it would appear to disallow further spending on either a stadium/sports complex or a library/cultural center until voters approve actual plans and budgets for the projects.

If they don’t enact the initiatives, they will be on the November ballot along with the candidates for mayor and council, who will have to explain their positions on both the projects themselves and whether voters should be allowed to approve or disapprove them.

Hizzoner is on record saying that there shall be no vote on the library. Will the council have him eat his words, or does he have another scheme up his sleeve?

Last week on KBOI radio the “King” / Mayor stated that he had 8% of the city budget sitting in a reserve account. The account is typically used to ensure good bond ratings.

He stated that he could take 3% ($50M) out of the reserve account and spend it down to 5% (about $85M) and not hurt the Cities rating. If $50 million is 3% then 8% means he has about $135 million stashed somewhere.

There is no question that the City has more income than it has ever had! Rather than reducing what the City takes from the tax payers they keep taking and keep spending.

Does that still leave money for the fire stations that were so important 5 years ago and were not build because of construction overruns?

If I remember correctly to finish the job would cost another 17 million.

EDITOR NOTE–MAyor went on record saying the fire bond “freed up” money for parks. Credibility gap is very wide.

“over budget, hold back spending, and magically produce a ‘surplus’”

“Rather than reducing what [they] take from the tax payers”

“selfish liberal money wasting bozos”.
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Interesting that these messages are directed ONLY at the City of Boise.
I don’t see any of the “Bieter-Bashers” making similar comments about our CONTROLLED legislature & governor changing the way the state operates.

Does anyone remember when our state sales tax was 5%? The ol’ Risch sales tax/property tax switch a-roo.

There is a lot of “excess” sales tax that just pours into the cities’ and counties’ coffers. Extra sales= the cities benefit more than expected.

YES, Idaho takes in more than it needs for the budget. No complaints?

Last year, Idaho had over 60 MILLION dollars of EXCESS- for one year. Did any of y’all get any of that back?
The current Idaho Budget Stabilization Fund (a slush fund) is over $413,000,000.
Same concept could be detailed for Ada and other agencies.

The City of Boise does it and some get their panties all in a wad.
The State of Idaho does it and those voices are silent.
Why is that?

EDITOR NOTE–So what do you think? Do citizens have a right to be outraged or not?

@Easterner

The difference should be clear between the city and state’s slush funds. Idaho’s 400 million in reserves goes to provide emergency funding for schools, roads, and other state run businesses. Boise City supports none of those entities and they at least have more than 1/4th of what the state has in reserves. See a problem with that? I do, and so do many others.

I agree, all agencies have mechanisms in their budgets to provide for these reserves, but is it reasonable that Boise City has a 764 million dollar budget since they only maintain emergency services and parks? I think that Boise is grossly wasting taxpayer money at a greater rate than any government agency in this state.

@Editor Note-
Do citizens have a right to be outraged?
Outraged at what?

Yes, they should be outraged that the Idaho Legislature crony majority actually passed bills to make citizens’ initiatives even MORE DIFFICULT to get on a ballot.
Were there any rallies against the legislature on this? Was Boise Working Together pushing back at the legislature to insure the citizens’ voice in the future? I must have missed it…

Yes, citizens should be outraged at the legislature’s crony (lack of) leadership that has effectively abused the successful citizens’ initiative of Medicaid expansion.

Not to mention the outrage should be shouted against the current national politicos.

Those things are outrageous!!!

The City of Boise spending city money to expand and improve a library for the future?
meh.

The way the mayor and councilors are going about? sure- that’s bad and politics as usual.

So, if the citizens are not fighting against the anti-citizens efforts in the Idaho legislature, there is little principle when they want to fight against the same issue at city hall.

But thankfully, ‘outraged’ citizens can take their outrage to the November ballot against the Mayor/Council’s approval of 66% of actual voters.

Eastie, the new library is not for books and such. TeamDave is building it as a new bigger toilet for the homeless to loiter and poop. It has no other function once built.

The process of building it will of course enrich friends of TeamDave, and this is the prime reason for building it. Similar to building thousands of expensive military things which don’t work and never will. It’s about transferring the money from me to them.

I do agree with you in there is outrageous government activities at all levels. Government expansion is a fatal cancer. So, Eastie, I’m puzzled by your outrage at people being outraged at this outrageous enrichment scheme. You are apparently outraged at people because they didn’t follow your list of priorities for their outrage?

@misappropriated spending. I know for a fact that the police department is in desperate need of more police cars. With the annexation of more land and new officers being hired some are having to double up because there are not enough cars for officers on each shift. This also applies to the officers stationed at Boise State. Instead of purchasing more cars so that officers response times are minimal to citizens calls for police assistance the mayor is spending $50 million in slush money to have his legacy library built so the citizens don’t have a voice. I hope that everyone remembers this when it comes time to vote in November.

Boise has an internal management plan referred to as the Strategic Framework: Playbook, with an Appendix that includes the following:

“Pursuant to a plan discussed with Mayor and Council in FY18, Police is requesting five new police officer positions for FY20. The recent comprehensive staffing study supported a need for 54 additional officers to meet current patrol and traffic needs. Police received seven new FTEs for FY19 and will be requesting five FTEs for each of the next five fiscal years.”

In five years, this plan will provide only 37 of the 54 needed, and this is solely to meet CURRENT patrol and traffic needs, not the future needs for the predicted population growth Boise is expecting, nor does this provide a replacement rate figure to cover those who retire, move away, quit, etc.

With 50,000 more residents in the next 20 years (2018 statistic), we will be constantly behind. Yet the City says a Safe & Secure Community is one of its 8 strategic priorities to achieve its vision of being the most livable.

Here is how the City will say it is addressing the issue of safety per the 2020 Budget:
• 5 police officers plus 1 for the airport (paid for by airport enterprise fund)
• 1 Legal Prosecutor
• 1 Emergency Preparedness Coordinator
• 1 Training Captain for the $12 million fire training facility
• Maintenance & operation costs for the fire training facility
• 1 time funding increase to the fire recruit academy due to a higher than anticipated number of fire retirements

With the exception of the police hires, this does not put “boots on the ground” to expand capacity to meet increased demand. Just replacing fire retirees does not expand capacity to provide emergency response, and it is possible that the 5 police hires may be doing just the same.

Here is additional content from recent Council Work Sessions and comments from City staff, which relates to where and how the City is prioritizing the use of public monies.
• Emergency Preparedness – created the Office of Emergency Preparedness in April 2018, “we have a lot further to go.” (12/4/18)
• Priority Based Budgeting – “sometimes the data is not good and we need to acknowledge this. The best metrics mean nothing if you don’t use them to solve problems.” (3/5/19)
• Fire – Chief Doan commented that “we know wildfire is the highest risk and will do the most damage”, while also acknowledging an increase in structure fires. (3/5/19)

EDITOR NOTE–
We offer the following response from police chief Bill Bones.

We did complete a PAM (patrol allocational model) study which showed 54 officers as the recommended number. However my request which was granted by the Council was for seven officers in the first year and the five per year for each of the following five years. They did not reduce any request I made.

There were several considerations we looked at prior to making the request, here are the key ones;

Fiscal responsibility to the taxpayers – what did we truly believe we needed vs nice to have in order to maintain the current high level of service.

Additional positions we would receive from the Airport and Boise State University contracts which would be on top of those given us by the Council.

Our ability to leverage the CSS (Community Service Specialist) positions. These are the civilian positions you see in uniform who have freed up a lot of Officer time.

A belief we will be able to continue to leverage technology to free up time (things like auto population of fields on police reports, less duplication, more efficient data base sharing, etc…).

The closing of the hiring gap. We had been running at an average of 12 open positions for years but have been able to completely close that to zero in the last couple years. This has effectively given us more Officers on the street.

Coupled with the above was the ability granted to us at our request to allow us to over-hire when we have an academy. This has smoothed out the troughs on our staffing for patrol due to the 9 month training curve and makes a significant difference.

Continued trend in downward crime rates. We are sitting at the lowest 5 year crime rate since we started having good records and are 50% under the mid nineties highs of crime rates.

Ultimately the request was made using the study and then balancing it with the above thoughts to make what we believed was the right request. It was staggered over several years both from the reality of budgets and also as we do not believe we could hire that many officers in one or two years and still maintain the high level bar we set for candidates we choose to be BPD Officers. Hope all this helps, feel free to call.

Bill Bones