From the Elkhart Truth:
The Elkhart City Council told Mayor Dick Moore to forget a trash fee and cut the budget instead. So he did.
Now we’ll find out what five council members consider important.
To make up a projected $1 million to $1.5 million budget shortfall for 2013, Moore proposed an $11.35 monthly trash pickup fee. Democrat Ron Troyer, arguing that many constituents in the 4th District couldn’t afford $136.20 a year, voted with the council’s four Republicans to kill the proposal.
Moore offered to waive the fee for those who couldn’t afford it. Troyer voted with Republicans to reject that, too.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services establishes the poverty level at $23,050 for a family of four. A $136 trash fee would’ve cost that family less than 0.6 percent of its annual income.
Too much, insisted Troyer and the Republicans.
Elkhart lost $10 million in revenue after Indiana voters imposed property tax caps in 2010. Moore responded by cutting $3.3 million from city budgets.
The council made its position clear: Cut more. So Moore did.
The mayor proposed three-day furloughs for 300 police and firefighters, as well as five days of unpaid leave for another 300 city workers. He proposed eliminating the neighborhood coordinator’s job and scrapping six unfilled positions in the police, fire, street, traffic and cemetery departments and the city attorney’s office.
Funding for Downtown Elkhart Inc.? Sliced by half, to $50,000. Money for the Elkhart County Economic Development Corp., budgeted this year at roughly $105,000? Another 50 percent cut. Thirty large targeted for a Greater Elkhart Chamber of Commerce incubator program? Gone.
So, thanks to the council’s rejection of a monthly $11.35 trash fee, this is what the city faces: Cuts in public safety, city services and economic development.
A city of 53,000 that recorded 156 violent crimes in 2010 — more than Mishawaka, Terre Haute or Kokomo, according to the FBI — cannot afford to take police officers or firefighters off the street.
A city with an 11 percent jobless rate cannot afford to stop funding economic development initiatives — initiatives that could help create jobs for Troyer’s constituents. Nor can it risk attracting potential business investment by cutting services.
And, just as important, a city just beginning to find its swagger again after four years of crushing economic hardship cannot afford to cut back on the one civic event that draws the entire community together — the Elkhart Jazz Festival, organized by Downtown Elkhart Inc.
But five city council members rejected a trash fee, and this is the result.
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http://www.etruth.com/article/20120908/OPINION/709089953
