Asked & Answered

Here on the website, on Episode 8 of Straight Talk on WOMT, and elsewhere, I've talked about the the critical importance of your Mayor really reporting to You and to the Council. This is just another aspect of the Mayor as the City Manager, respecting the Strong Council/Weak Mayor structure of our City governance, and Better Accountability and Better Budgeting. You can find much more on all of these across this website.

State of the City Report- What It Should Be

First, I would point out this is a REPORT, not an address. I see it as critical that the Mayor report to Council and YOU at 1/2 way through the budget process to report on what is and isn't working and what we (the City and Council) may need to adjust. It is an operational and financial check up, like a mid-term report card. You should expect big picture financials and other established performance targets depicted through charts and graphs.

It will also talk about how our community has grown/changed and what changes we can anticipate. This is to better allow the Council and Mayor to plan for the future, and to let you know how this are developing. I would plan for each report to end with the recognition of some of the greatest contributors to City operations and to our community.

State of the City Report- What It Should NOT Be

• A Political Speech

• A Rehearsal for Higher Office

• A Victory Lap

• An Abuse of Office and City Staff hours and the time of Council and Citizens for self-aggrandizement.

None of these helps the Council or you.

I am all for free and open information, but I had too many people tell me they were afraid to sign my papers since they knew people would read them. You should be able to support someone financially or to appear on the ballot without feeling threatened, so I work to make sure that your personal information would be hard to read. I will never violate your right to some privacy.

What We Know

I suspected this might come up when I saw and heard it covered in the HTR and on WOMT. I agree that the City shouldn't have to wait until 2037, or 2040, or 2045 (Waldo style delays) to get this mess fixed. However, I also know this road didn't suddenly go bad this year. In fact, just a year ago, the Mayor's strategy was to ask all of us to complain to the state (HTR 7/25/19). I recommend you read both articles. Be sure to notice the details about annual road service moneys from the State.

Washington/Calumet didn't suddenly become a lousy road this year or last year. Like so many of the roads in our City, it has been getting worse and worse and worse. If you look at the Capital Works Program Worksheets (click here), you will see a block has been listed as needing to be resurfaced at least as early as 2012. It was scheduled for 2016 and then in 2016 pushed back to 2018. They are now budgeting for work in 2021 while resurfacing from a decade ago waits to be done. Our need to do something about Washington/Calumet has been clear inside City Hall for years. I don't see how we get to put the blame on the State now.

Washington/Calumet clearly shows the costs related to delaying maintenance. This is something I warned of back in 2016 (click here).

(More of my thoughts on ROADS or PLANNING are at these links.)

The City Plan - Shame Them, Wait Them Out, or Let Them Plant Flowers?!?

If the City had accepted what it already knew, that this is a road that demands attention, it should have come up with a plan to address this and spent a couple years developing understanding and a relationship with the State to help get the job done. Calling a State Legislator on "Be My Guest" or annually telling all of us to badger our representation isn't a productive plan. It's more like a Hail Mary that you throw and catch yourself.

Mayors should be cultivating respectful, productive relationships with State government. A Mayor contacting the State should carry the weight of the population he/she represents. Asking us to call is redundant when the Mayor and the Council have asked for this help. What does it say when the Mayor of Wisconsin's 25th largest city can't get any traction with our State Administrations in the decade plus that this corridor has needed attention??

Recently, Mayor Nickels said he hopes to put 8th Street style planters along Washington. "At least, when you hit that pothole, you can see a pretty flower and be happy." (Listen here starting at 11:06.) I'm sure the second half was meant as a joke (at least I hope so), but shouldn't your Mayor have hopes and plans to fix the road before beautifying the sidewalk? Is the plan for our roads to look good in a picture, but horrible in person?

On the Stop-gap Plan for Partial Resurfacing

It's true that a reconstruction is the best plan, which why I've been advocating for years to develop a Long-Term Streets Plan. (You can check some of my budget remarks from years past.) Instead, in the 2021 budget, the City puts together the worst parts of several ideas to find a non-solution that no one likes! Rather fix the whole road or resurface the whole road, The City will take a year's worth of State road service money and use it to cover a portion of the road with resurfacing. As some have pointed out, this is worse than nothing because that work will be destroyed when the actually fix the road.

I would suggest a more straight forward plan. Rather than making them the villian, work with the State to get the road done sooner. I don't doubt that the State has more road work that it can afford. We have a good credit rating, and interest rates are at historic lows. I am sure that, working cooperatively, we could get the road work done earlier by offering to finance the work for the State, while making it clear the City must be paid back in whole. This way, the City gets the road done sooner, the State pays for it later, and the work ought to be cheaper because the cost of road work doesn't go down year after year.

It's not a perfect solution, but you know what they say about failing to plan. Spending all our State Aid and Capital Improvements Borrowing on this will only ensure that we will delay other roads that will soon fail too. We keep finding a road that is failing completely every few years. A Long-Term Roads Plan might spare us yet another "emergency."

This is an important question that needs to be considered about anything that is proposed for the City to do. Paying for any projects can only be done one of three ways:

1. Get someone else to pay for it (like Waldo)

2. Pay for it with the taxes you have collected

3. Borrow the money

Pay As You Go

Some Alders would like the City to be on a "pay as you go" plan. In other words, you do not borrow money for predictable, recurring costs. For example, if you replace a squad car every 6 years and you have 6 squad cars, you should be budgeting (and taxing) the cost of one new squad car every year. One of the benefits of making a Roads Plan as part of a Master Plan is predictable costs. Everyone knows to expect that a portion of our taxes will go to repair and replace a set number of miles.

The downside of this approach is it is easier to build the cost of a squad car into the budget annually than it is 7 miles of road work because of the price tag.

Borrow the Money

As you do yourself for expensive things, the City can borrow to pay for Capital Improvements. There are many advantages to this approach. First, the cost are spread out over tax rates for the next 20 years, so it doesn't appear that expensive. Second, you don't need to plan out road work because you just borrow whatever you need when you need it- at least until your credit runs out. Third, the costs still expire before the usefullness of the road, assuming a concrete road with a 40-50 year life. Last, interest rates, especially for municipalities, is incredibly low right now.

There are several downsides to this approach though. First, the work is more expensive when you borrow because you have to add in the interest costs. Second, it hids the true costs of running and maintaining a City and, when taken to an extreme, creates artificially and unsustainably low tax rates. Third, even cities have finite credit. You can't borrow forever. Last, after about 15 or so years of borrowing, you will reach a point of paying back as much on debt as you would to do to build a year's worth of roads. Then you can't afford to do any roads without borrowing. Oh boy.

So What Can We Do?

My advice to the Council, because they are the only ones empowered to make the decision, will be to do the following:

• Create a real, fiscally sound Long-Term Roads Plan and keep up with it

• Make meeting the Planned Roads Costs the first or second priority of the budget

• Prepare themselves and taxpayers for the costs and where the money is coming from

• Use a Mix of Borrowed and Assessed Dollars with less and less borrowing each year until you reach the Pay As You Go/Pay as You Use balance point that you want.

My best guess is it willl take 7-10 years to process but, in a 35-50 year rotating roads program, that's only about the first quarter to get up to speed. Staying there once we get reach it should be easier.

I think this is the root of a great deal of the disfunction we've seen from City government over the years. Our City's structure was intended as Strong Council-Weak Mayor, but for the last three mayors (at least) it hasn't been run that way.

In a Strong Council-Weak Mayor structure the Council sets policy, hires Department Heads, and directs the Mayor as to how the city should be run. The Mayor (often elected out of the council) has limited powers and functions much in the same way that a City Manager does. This is why when our Council gets frustrated with the actions or the information they are getting (or not getting) from the Mayor's office, they discuss going to a City Manager style of governance.

A Strong Mayor-Weak Council model, the Mayor is elected by the public, hires all his/her department heads and has veto power over the Council. Typically the Mayor expresses her/his vision for the city and relies on getting the Council to pass the policies and procedures that fit this vision.

You may notice that Manitowoc has features of both. As they say on the National League of Cities website, "there is no sharp category that distinguishes between "weak" and "strong" mayors, but rather a continuum of authority and power along which cities are spread." (https://www.nlc.org/resource/cities-101-mayoral-powers/ )

Time and energy wasted over what the Council does and what the Mayor does is foolish and preventable. I will sit down with the Council and tell them that I see the Mayor as a liaison between City departments and the Council. As I like to say with my coloring book analogy, the Council's job is to draw the picture and pick the crayons. Then the Mayor and City staff color it in- and try to stay inside the lines. In other words, the Council creates the big picture and provides the tools needed to make it possible.

I am committed to honoring the structure the City of Manitowoc was chartered under. Doing otherwise creates all kinds of disfunction, fosters power struggles, and allows people to play the political blame game rather than getting things done.