SOME SUGGESTIONS FOR CUTS IN SPENDING FOR SHELBY COUNTY AS THEY PREPARE TO RAISE PROPERTY TAXES

Mayor Wharton and the County Commission are looking for ways to raise more money on the backs of overburdened residential tax payers. They claim that there are no places that they can cut. Bare boned they call the budget proposal. This is April Fools Day but this is no joke.

I will be the first to admit that the County is better than the City of Memphis in their transparency and their willingness to admit that we are in an unsustainable financial situation. However the City School System and the County are largely responsible for the huge county debt.

SHELBY COUNTY BONDED DEBT OUTSTANDING TOTAL FOR EACH YEAR
YEAR	Total bonded debt for school purposes	Total general obligation bonded debt, not for school purposes	Total bonded debt for Shelby County
1998	374,695,201	513,298,731	887,993,932
1999	462,652,365	570,419,996	1,033,072,361
2000	452,521,665	544,385,696	996,907,361
2001	582,727,876	523,964,486	1,106,692,362
2002	622,958,087	597,214,274	1,220,172,361
2003	689,737,629	627,359,732	1,317,097,361
2004	913,093,850	667,904,373	1,581,998,223
2005	881,448,367	655,741,606	1,537,189,972
2006	1,052,751,140	664,012,691	1,716,763,831
2007	1,155,445,388	626,558,892	1,782,004,280

 

Look at the debt from 1998 to 2007 for school purposes, an increase of $780 million. Why has this happened when there has been no appreciable school population increase? When they build a county school for say $10 million, they raise $40 million and give $30 million to the City Schools. They do not need to do this as by law they can finance the $10 million dollar school with the county tax payers outside the City limits paying for the new school. They did this once on the Arlington High School. But now the County Commission will not allow this as they want to give the extra money to the City Schools. Humbug.

Then look at the roll up costs of city and county employees. Those employees with longer years of service can get up to 13 weeks per year of time off due to vacations, sick days, personnel days, holidays and bonus days that means that they can be off work 25% of the year. Obviously this means that more people must be employed to get the work done. Very few in the private sector have such benefits. We need to take a hard look at our government and see if we can tighten belts beyond what politicians say is possible.

We need to look down the road at consolidation and have an independent study done (not connected to any political group or politician) and determine if consolidation (like Metro Davidson) would really save a lot of money. I contacted Metro Davidson and got great cooperation from them with a prompt response to my questions. (Such a difference in my dealing with the City of Memphis). I found the following information.

Total full time public employment for Metro Davidson is 9500 employees with an additional 1250 part time employees.

As near as I can tell Memphis has 6225 and Shelby County has 6802 for total of 13027. Our population is somewhat larger than Metro Davidson but similar government functions should not account for a 37% higher employment total.

We need to know if consolidation would be financially beneficial as we are headed in a downward spiral with the pending tax increases.