What Would You Cut Before Parks From Budget?

For decades the nation’s leaders have used the threat of closing down parks as a ploy to increase taxes. President Richard Nixon threatened to shut down the Washington Monument to get more tax money, something an earthquake has successfully done this year.

Putting a “closed sign” on a National Park like Yellowstone or Yosemite has been a regular threat. So when County Executive Charlie Dooley came out with a budget proposal for 2012 that would close 23 County Parks and fire 40 full time Parks workers and 95 part time park employees, my first thought was that it was an idle threat.

Good government should supply services that are needed and that people cannot normally obtain. This would include police and fire protection plus ambulance service. Safe streets, schools, sewers, zoning, laws, taxes and parks are all traditional government services. Notice that I put parks at the end of the list.

I have no problem with the Parks Department taking a hit from the budget ax.  But closing 50 percent of the parks and firing 135 employees seems excessive.         

But before we lock out residents and tourists from using County Parks, and fire a number of employees, let’s look at the budget and see if we can’t decide where to make a few whacks first.

Earlier this year during a hiring freeze Dooley created jobs for people with political connections to his past campaigns.  Sara Howard, a former employee with Democratic Congressman Russ Carnahan was given an $89,000 a year job as the spokeswoman to recently elected County Assessor Jake Zimmerman. The former appointed assessor was able to speak for himself. But Dooley turned the position into an elected one and the guy who campaigned on his own suddenly needs a spokesperson. 

Dooley also found work for his campaign spokesperson Katy Jamboretz. She is now making $88,000 as the spokeswoman for the County Economic Council. The Economic Council has a projected 2011 budget of $3,361,600. For 2012 Dooley wants $3,195,000.

Why do we need both the St. Louis Regional Growth Association and the County Economic Council to bring jobs to the area?  If you read what the Economic Council claims it has done in 2011, it includes the China Cargo Hub (a complete failure) as a success and talks about doing site selection and finding financing for businesses.  Those are both private sector jobs being done by government. In other words the County Economic Council is taking away jobs. For this they need a spokesperson. You would think they would want to keep this secret and not have spokesperson.

There is Mike Temporiti, who is the son of Dooley’s campaign treasurer, John Temporiti.  A $70,000 a year job was created for Mike in the Revenue Department.

All the featherbedding, political cronyism jobs plus benefits equal $370,000. They need to go now.

Eliminate the Economic Council all together and you save another $3.1 million.

The County budget calls for $406,276 for out-of-town travel and training. This is easy to cut. Rather than close parks and fire employees, let’s not send any members of the police command staff to the FBI Academy for three months. No trips to conferences at Lake of the Ozarks. How about no county employee or elected official leaves town for any convention? Training classes can be held locally and out-of-town training would be only for classes required by law for specialty positions. That should reduce the travel budget to $200,000 for a savings of $206,000.                 

In 2012 we are paying employees $1.67 million for parking allowances. Many residents of St. Louis County have to pay to park where they work. I’d suggest weaning County employees off the free parking perk by only paying for half. That would create a savings of $835,000.

Cutting from the police department is not an easy thing to do. The cops have not been getting raises for several years. But the one area where the police department could save some money is to switch from commissioned police command officers to civilians to run some support services. You don’t need a captain and two sergeants working the communications and computer units. Nor do you need a lieutenant running the record room. Frankly, the record room used to be a place the department sent staff officers for speaking out. By changing these jobs to civilians you could save another $100,000 in salaries and benefits.

Here is another line item that is hard to ignore: $178,260 in memberships. For instance, if the police chief wants to belong to the International and Missouri Police Chiefs Association, let him pay for his professional dues himself and take that off on his taxes. The same would go for other professionals in County government.   

In tough times, leaders should show the way. If we have to make these cuts, elected officials should be taking 10 percent pay cuts. For the County Council and Dooley we would be looking at another $50,000.

So there. I was able to save $1.75 million in cuts ($5 million total if you eliminate the Economic Council) pretty easily, without touching parks.

Why don’t you give it a try? Attached is the line-by-line 2012 proposed budget and summary. Email it into Dooley and County reps. The county starts budget negotiations Tuesday.

And you can also go dirctly to the County website. Here is the link to the County Documents. Click on “budgets” and look at the 2012 budget summary or line by line budget. Let us know where you think more money can be saved.

Go taxpayers!

Editor's note: A public hearing about the budget cuts begins Tuesday, 6:30 p.m. in Clayton, 41 S. Central Ave., at the County Council Tuesday meeting. Every public speaker will have 2-4 minutes at the microphone.
Comments may also be emailed to the county's administrative director at gfrank@stlouisco.com or called in to 314-615-5440.