City Hall Faces Difficult Choices

It’s easier to throw rhetorical rocks at City Hall than it is to manage the place.

The upcoming budget year, for example, presents City Manager Bill Pupo with difficult choices - as well as with some of the brightest hopes the city has faced in years.

The good news should begin rolling in about this time next year. Sometime next summer, if all goes well, the River Park Square retail complex will open its doors. Downtown businesses hope for an upsurge of growth and investment as customer traffic returns to the level of vigor the core historically has enjoyed. As cash registers ring, new sales tax dollars will boost the city’s revenues.

This - economic growth - is by far the best way to give City Hall the resources it needs to meet the public demand for more services, such as street repairs. Pupo knows this as well as anyone. He has listened in frustration, for example, as the public griped about potholes but declined to raise taxes to fix them. He has urged the Legislature, with little success, to stop ordering city service enhancements without funding them and to give cities a bigger share of the state sales tax. He has scoured his budget for savings, implementing recommendations of efficiency audits.

Finally, he knows that appreciable spending cuts would provoke public outcries, since 73 percent of the city budget goes to police, fire and roads. Twelve percent goes to the city’s popular parks. Seven percent goes to libraries, rebuilt with voter approval and one of the most socially constructive services the city offers.

Where could he cut, without provoking howls? A recent audit backed up his claim the budget’s tight; Tacoma, the most comparable city in Washington, spends $926 per resident while Spokane spends $844. Due to its comparatively weak tax base, Spokane’s city government long has lived with tight budgets. That’s one more reason to work for economic growth next year.

But, while the city waits for growth to pay off, it’s in a jam.

The city’s costs will rise, painfully. Employees will receive pay increases, due to unresolved union talks plus a steep minimum wage increase ordered by the voters.

City computer systems require upgrades, or the Y2K bug will crash them. Domestic violence is clogging the jail.

Pupo proposes to trim cash reserves to a risky 2 percent of spending and to let property tax revenues rise by 6 percent, the maximum allowed by law.

He has implemented several efficiency measures including a 20 percent cut in travel and supplies.

And still, the budget did not balance. That led to talk of fee increases. The lowest fees, in comparison to other cities, include parking rates and fines for downtown’s on-street meters.

But with downtown - like City Hall - in a fragile transition period, the timing couldn’t be worse for moves that could alienate downtown shoppers.

With rates at the meters comparatively low, an increase is at least a reasonable option.

Overtime-parking fines, on the other hand, already make shoppers feel unwelcome; by boosting fines from $10 to $15 the city risks driving shoppers away when remaining businesses can ill afford any loss.

The solution, therefore, will have to include a painful compromise of limited fee increases and, yes, some unpopular spending cuts.

As the City Council fashions this package, all of us ought to bear in mind that relief is on the way.