Washington learns they can't afford a $3 million police station | Eastern North Carolina Now

Or, have they learned?

    Publisher's Note: This article was originally published in the Beaufort Observer.

    Maybe it was because after sitting on hard-backed benches for three hours, but it sure seemed like an Alice in Wonderland discussion when the Washington City Council, near the end of a long agenda Monday (6-13-11) night, heard a report on the proposed new police station. We'll leave it to you to figure out from the video below what the motivation was that was driving all the discussion...nearly 45 minutes of it. Here are the givens:

    Washington needs a new police station. The current one is woefully inadequate. Everyone agrees with that.

    The current design that the police desire will cost about $4.25 million, while the strip-downed version would be about $3 million. Bare bones they call it.

    Washington does not have $4.25 million. It does not have $3 million. It does have about one million in a reserve fund for a police station.

    There are lenders who are willing to lend the City $2 million or more.

    Washington does not have the "capacity" to carry that much more debt at this time. The Local Government Commission will not permit it.

    Washington has been looking high and low for "grants" to help build a police station and has not come up with enough to build the project. Times are tough and large sources of funding for such projects are pretty scarce now days.

    So the issue was whether to shelve the planning or to proceed with drawing up specifications for bids and continue to look for, hope for, wish for (whatever) two million dollars or enough cash flow to borrow that much money.

    It takes them 45 minutes to decide they don't have the money but they are going to keep looking. What's with that? That's where they started out.

    The really weird thing is that they have known all this for months. That is, if they heard one of their members, Doug Mercer, tell them more than once: "We just don't have the money to build a $3 million police station."

    Considering the discussion, the majority apparently still doesn't believe that. Here's the discussion, if you want to use 45 minutes of your time to find out what we just told you in three minutes click on the video below:

    Commentary

    It seems to us that the approach the Mayor and majority of the council are using for this project is very indicative of much of their decision-making and symptomatic of what is wrong with the mindset: "Let's decide what we're going to spend and then figure out how to get the money...and if we have to spend more we'll worry about that and whether we can afford it later."

    In the same meeting they canceled a contract for docks on the waterfront that was done that way. And once again, Doug Mercer told them they were headed up a box cannon when they started out on a project that was supposed to cost $250,000 and then turned into a $434,000 project.

    And then there was the fire station. That too was a "real need." So they decided to spend to build a new station. It ended up costing the taxpayers of Washington nearly twice as much as originally "planned."

    Must be something in the local water because the Washington City Council is not the only one afflicted by this mindset. In 2006-2008 we watched our school board do the same thing.

    They had a big study done that said they needed $32 million to bring every school building in the county up to current code. They got the people to vote approval of a $33 million bond issue and then proceeded to spend $39.4 million on just 7 of the 14 schools. They then had to juggle money around to cover that $6.4 million overrun and robbed other schools of needed repairs and maintenance. Now the county is looking at a $2.5 million annual increase in property taxes.

    Then the County Commission signed an "Interlocal Agreement" guaranteeing the schools a prescribed level of funding that caused the county to deplete its fund balance. Because the "Chickengate Agreement" cost them more than we could afford we are now facing a $2.5 million tax increase in the midst of the worst recession in our lifetimes.

    So what's the problem? Simple. We've got too many leaders who can't figure out what we can afford.

    We are not disputing any of the "needs." We're not even here arguing about the planned costs. What we are saying is that our local officials on several governing boards don't know how to determine what we can afford.



    The video above is an example of that kind of mindset. It is: "we have a need, here's what we're going to do" rather than "here's the need, what can we afford to do?"

    We'll save it for another day, but the real problem here is the professional leadership in these organizations. It is their jobs to identify the needs, figure out the best solution(s) and then tell the board what they can afford or cannot afford to do. That is what has been missing. That is what needs to be corrected PDQ.