Students have a few months before report cards appear in the
mail, but grading time has already arrived for the city’s five
elected council members.
Morgan Hill – Students have a few months before report cards appear in the mail, but grading time has already arrived for the city’s five elected council members.
For the second time this year, the Morgan Hill Times is asking community residents and readers to help gauge how well city council is meeting its objectives. The public has 30 days to fill out and return the report card that accompanies this story (either in print or online), and have those grades averaged and compared with average scores from council members and the Times editorial staff.
This time around, the city council met or came close to meeting five of 20 goals laid out at the beginning of the year, according to city officials.
“The city has ambitious goals for improving community services, protecting the environment, and enhancing the economic health of the community,” said City Manager Ed Tewes. “The goals on which the newspaper asks us to be graded are interim benchmarks and short-term objectives towards those long-term goals, and we have done a pretty good job of accomplishing them.”
Officials managed to return the city budget to the black in the fiscal year that ended in June and, in the approved budget for this year, they project the city will fall less than $40,000 shy of the targeted $550,000 surplus. The secret to that success lies mainly in a council decision to shrink the boundaries of the area governed by the city’s Redevelopment Agency. By doing so, the city expects to regain $700,000 this year in tax revenues that would have otherwise gone into the coffers of the RDA, which finances public facilities and redevelopment of blighted areas.
To boost projected surpluses, council also decided to steer money away from an endowment earmarked for the long-term maintenance of city parks, according to Tewes. Officials used $250,000 of the Park Maintenance Fund’s $300,000 annual income to boost the city’s general fund, the vast majority of which pays for city employee salaries.
At the same time, council managed to limit the amount of general fund money earmarked for support to the Recreation and Community Services Department. The city avoided cutbacks in the department through a $1.5 million subsidy of its operations – $100,000 less than the maximum subsidy council had set as a goal. Officials also used a mix of RDA and general fund money to add three new police officers.
Budget issues were not the only goals council tackled in the latest round of evaluation. They also approved a change in regulatory policy – nearly five months in advance of the May deadline – that forces developers of commercial and industrial properties to pay fees at the time permits are issued for construction. The change prevents “mom and pop” stores from being surprised with large fees just as they’re preparing to open a store, according to Karl Bjarke, the city’s deputy public works director.
Like many other cities, city leaders are also turning their gaze to the environment. On Wednesday, council approved a broad agenda of areas in which they expect city staff to begin crafting eco-friendly policies and practices. The list includes efforts to improve air quality, conserve wildlife habitat, protect creeks and streams, and conserve water, among others. Completion of that goal, originally scheduled for June, comes more than two months late.
Assessing the council’s overall success on the latest round of evaluation, Mayor Steve Tate said officials got a “temporary incomplete” on the environmental front, “but we pass overall.”
Tate said that he expects to meet and perhaps exceed the budget surplus goal, even though the projection falls short of the target.
“I think we’re being conservative, because the last two years we came in better than we actually budgeted,” he said. “We just set a big guideline … that we don’t want to impair services.”
In the last council report card published in June, Tate and his elected peers received mostly As and one B from the editorial board, while readers were harder on elected officials and gave them Bs and Cs. The goals under review in that round included: Holding a workshop on the fate of a community services building and the El Toro Youth Center; fine-tuning a strategy to increase jobs to allow workers to afford Morgan Hill’s cost of living; and continuing an effort to revitalize downtown’s defunct Granada Theater.
While council members have expressed some concerns with the Times’ report card process – formally known as the Accountability in Community Leadership Project – they say they are not averse to the idea.
“In general overall, I’ve always been okay with an open government and looking at what we’re doing and if we can do it better,” Councilwoman Marby Lee said. “Are we doing what we’re saying we’re going to do? I guess I don’t have any issues with that.”
The accountability project also sat well with Morgan Hill preschool teacher Susan Lynn.
“I think it’s a good idea,” she said. “Council might pay more attention because they know the public is showing interest and getting involved.”
The current round of report cards are due from the community and council members by Oct. 24. The Times plans to run a follow-up story once the grades are submitted and averaged. The next round of council evaluation will take place in January.
