Thank you for this excellent article Dave!

It’s astounding how out of touch with the public all the Council members and the Mayor are, and how unwilling even one of them is to break ranks. The “Groupthink” of these Bieter regime folks that Bob Kustra wrote about in an excellent OpEd a few months ago was vividly on display last night. They had clearly devised their plan in advance of the hearing: Brand the initiatives as unconstitutional. Loftily proclaim you must follow your sacred oath to uphold the Constitution (which you violate all the time anyway). Create confusion in the public to undermine the upcoming vote.

I think the public outrage will build over the City coming up with 50 million dollars to pay cash for the Safdie monstrosity. And the total in the end – with cost overruns – is more likely to be 100 million in cash. This 50 million will be just the beginning.

“More confusing” seems to be the goal for Bieterville’s leaders. If people would just leave them alone and quit asking questions, they would be happy to move forward with whatever is best for us.

Comment posted by Disgusted wondered if the City will take the 3% increase again. You betcha! This has become standard operating procedure, and is planned to continue into the future, even though the increase is primarily to fund the annual base compensation increase for employees, rather than using this toward essential core services and the many problems the city is facing. The budget director is on the record stating this issue to Council, that this increase primarily funds personnel increases.

You can see how property taxes and personnel costs go lock-step together in the budget documents by Comparing the Total Revenue amount to the subtotal under Personnel Costs (p. 40-41 in FY 2020 budget).

In 2014 personnel costs were $124,148,000. By the year 2024 they are projected to be $189,636,000. I question if this is sustainable.

If I were a City employee, I would be highly concerned about the cost of this library project, and the impact on employment when the next recession rolls in. Whose positions will be on the chopping block to cut expense in order to afford the operation and maintenance costs that will come with this enormous structure?

The 2008 recession require lots of cutbacks. Or will cut backs occur by reducing the contributions to the pension fund? Just as the City is currently evaluating reducing the reserve fund from 8% to 5% to afford this library, which reduces the city’s “safety net” that is needed when revenues decrease. Will medical insurance premiums no longer be 100% covered by the City? Will the minimum 8 hours of sick leave per month be reduced? Will the $500 wellbeing credit or the free bus passes be eliminated? Or will taxes just keep going up for the citizens?

All they need to do now is make the ballot read so YES means NO and NO means YES.

As a many-decade budget professional, I see how the City ‘leaders’ are doing a ‘buffet style’ approach to scraping up cash: a little bit here, a little bit there.

They are going to save $$ by not purchasing vehicles? Hah! Have you seen a white Boise City vehicle that’s more than 2 years old?

Do they charge the airport for the central services provided (HR, accounting, etc.)? There’s some $$. Do they charge the other agencies that generate their own revenue?

When will sewer rates go through the roof? Franchise fees charged to cable TV and utilities (which will get passed on to the citizens)?

There are a dozen more ways for the city to tap us directly or indirectly. Watch it happen.

The library brochure that was on the table with the City council Agends says, “Project will not result in an increase in city taxes” – just as the main library page has said.

Unless not one single additional employee will be needed to staff a significantly larger facility, this continues to be a misrepresentation of the impact. And the City’s own FY 2020 budget says,

Potential operating costs associated with the Main Library project, budgeted in FY 2019, are still being evaluated.

Without knowing what the operating costs will be, how can the City truthfully say this project will not increase taxes. The library project study conducted in 2000 shows the costs for operations as, “total additional costs over the current costs” as $2,656,785. And that was without an expensive book robot that can run around $1 million a year.

“Water Renewal” is the new term for ‘sewage treatment plant’.

How special.

So I am confused. I thought that we were going to have a vote as to weather to build the library or not. Now dingle Dave has scraped together $50 million together to pay for the library and the rest just comes from wherever. So does the vote then mean nothing? If the citizens vote no does the library still get built because he came up with the majority of the cash? It seems like he is trying to do an end around because I think he knows it may get voted down. Is this the case?

When the City became totally “Wowed” by Safdie’s interview, did anyone at City Hall do one simple mathematical calculation:

Take the $84 million in voter approved bond money that Salt Lake City determined they needed for their 2003 Safdie design (nearly identical to Boise’s) and plug that amount into an online inflation calculator?

It comes up with a cost of $114,635,804 in 2018 dollars.

That would have been a simple test to understand that this groups product was way, way, way out of their league, due to the fact that the City had a $65 million budget during the interview vetting process.