CH Tax Hike: A Modest Proposal

Last week Colonial Heights City Manager Tom Mattis presented his 2014-15 proposed budget that included a “modest” 2 penny tax increase. He argued that the increase was needed in order to provide services the community had become to expect from the city, and the new funding would go to pay for several added positions, most notably at the shiny new courthouse. I guess we should have expected the new courthouse to require additional Sheriff’s deputies in order to maintain Order in the Court and keep the judges safe from potential harm from the criminals they incarcerate.

Certainly those are important goals. But the city does not need to address their shortfall by scraping even more money off the backs of its citizens via a real estate tax hike. In fact, they really need to look within for a source of the $300,000 projected shortfall the increased taxes are expected to cover. Each penny in taxes raises about $150,000 for city coffers.

The City Manager would have us think that a two penny hike is not that much of a hike. But, a hike in taxes is more money out of the citizens’ pockets. And in this economy, most people are looking for ways to cut their own budgets, not spend more. The way out of a hole is to stop digging.

Without digging too much into the proposed budget, I would think that there must be some other way to address such a small amount of money so that the citizenry doesn’t have to shoulder yet even more of the burden. The city needs to look at the expense side first.

Budgets are a balance between what comes in and what goes out. In my house, that means cutting costs, and cutting costs means looking at ways to make the income meet the outgo. So we look at our home services and see what can be reduced or cut if necessary. Some things are static, but there are ways to economize and ways to keep the status quo in place. Sometimes, you have to do without things and other times you have to make tough choices.

The city has opted to try to get through this down turn in the economy without losing personnel, an honorable effort. But the truth of the matter is that many other companies, cities, and governing bodies have had to do precisely that to maintain their balances.

Payroll is the greatest hit to any budget. There is more involved than just wages; each position has associated costs for benefits, training, and equipment. When big budget cuts come down, the rest of the world tends to look at salaries as one way to meet the loss.

For our shortfall, we are not talking about a lot of positions. Just a few would make a difference, and there are so few—two or three—that such could be accomplished rather easily by attrition and not filling vacancies. We are not talking about layoffs or early retirement offerings or anything like that. We don’t really have that many employees that such a move would be beneficial, but we do have people who leave their jobs and move on to other opportunities. When that happens, I recommend not filling the position, or at least taking a lot of time to fill it. All of that “lost” time amounts to savings on the plus side of the ledger.

For my two cents, I would hope the city looks deeper into its own staffing. Do we really need all the people we having working in all of those positions? Do we have the proper amount of people staffed for each department? Aren’t there standards for some of the departments that recommend staffing levels? It seems to me to be a reasonable question.

After that, let’s take a look at some of our larger priced purchases. Are we buying new heavy equipment? Do we really need it right now, or can we phase in the purchases over time? Is it possible to share purchases between the city and the schools? If we have to buy new equipment, is there a way that we can negotiate a better price for buying two or more vehicles?

When it comes to budgeting and the potential for a tax increase, it behooves the city and city council in particular, to turn every stone and look at every possibility. There are a lot of citizens who are living on fixed incomes and even a two penny increase in taxes will have a negative effect on their lives. For me, before you start digging into my pockets you should make sure the circumstances are dire. Need a new truck? At my house, we look at getting another year out of the old one. The city is not so large, a mere four-square miles, that getting more time out of a vehicle is impossible.

The economic downturn has hurt everyone. Keeping the city above the fray may not be the best way to go. I applaud the desire to keep everyone on the books, but why not freeze new hires and look at downsizing a bit before taking a bite out of the home owners? There may indeed be an issue with staffing and the distribution of staff. It may be the case that we have too many in one department and not enough in another. These are the things the city needs to look at, and not whether they believe the people of Colonial Heights can withstand this modest proposal.

By the Content of their Character

I am the first person to stand up for someone’s first amendment rights to free speech, but there are times when a bit of common sense needs to hold sway. Free speech or not, some things stretch the boundaries of what’s acceptable, and some are just plain rude and uncalled for.

Believe me, ask anyone who knows me, I am among the top advocates for free speech. What I write and have written here in this column stands as a monument to that. Without the right to free speech, things like this column and the writings of many other people today would likely land them in jail.

It wasn’t so long ago that people adopted pen names in order to keep themselves from being persecuted for the satires they wrote protesting the way their government was acting. Back then, being a writer was serious business and depending on what you were writing, it could indeed bear serious consequences like jail and death. More than one writer met his fate over the things writ on paper, or papyrus, or a stone tablet for that matter.

But even so, and while I would advocate for a person’s right to express themselves, there are times when good conscience should reign supreme. For instance, it’s against the law to scream “fire” in a movie theater. I know at the time such laws were created there was more danger of a theater burning down than there are today, but it’s a common sense law. It’s no different than someone going into an airport today and yelling, “Bomb!” It’s not a joke, it’s not funny, and the perpetrator ought at least to see a bit of jail time to shock them out of doing it again.

So, when two St. Anthony’s High School seniors walked into an after-regular school hours sporting event draped in a Confederate flag what is one to assume? On a T-shirt or on a ball cap, and I have no problem. Free speech, right?

One time when I was teaching in Mecklenburg County, VA, one of my African-American students complained to me about another student who was wearing a baseball cap with a Confederate battle flag patch on the top front. He said that the flag bothered him and could I do something about it?

I asked him what he thought the flag meant. He said the typical comments about racism and such that one might expect to hear. So I said ‘you think it’s like an emblem of ignorance and being a red neck?’ To which he replied, “Yes.” So I said, “Well, would you rather have him going around letting you know what he thinks, or would you rather have no idea what he thinks even though he harbors those kinds of feelings?”

My student thought about it for a second and then said, “I guess you’re right, Mr. B.”

But to be draped in the Confederate flag, as reported by Newsday reporter Bart Jones in a recent article, is another thing altogether. And, just for the record, I’m assuming this to be the Confederate Battle Flag, the Stars and Bars as it were. While it’s one thing to promote one’s heritage, it’s quite another to provoke people with an object that has indeed become a symbol of racism and hatred.

White supremacist groups, skin heads, and the KKK have all taken the old battle flag as a symbol to support their organizations. It doesn’t stand for state’s rights and southern heritage anymore. Some of these same groups also advocate the Swastika, the flag of Nazi Germany. Is there a more striking symbol of hate than the flag that supported the advocates of the Holocaust and the murder of countless Jews and Poles and enemies of the state? How can wearing the Confederate flag like that be anything but hate mongering? I don’t know.

So in my mind, the actions taken by St. Anthony’s principal Brother Cregan are both appropriate and fair. Note that he did not immediately suspend the two seniors for the year. Initially they were suspended for a week, but during the intervening time, the good Brother re-evaluated the punishment and opted for one even harsher.

“I find it just very hard to even imagine why any student in 2014 would even consider or thing that a Confederate flag would be anything other than a symbol of hate,” Cregan said.

For its part, the New York Civil Liberties Union, an advocate for free speech, said students should be able to openly express their views, even those considered offensive.

“Our motto is more speech, not censorship or punishment,” NYCLU director Donna Lieberman said. “Helping children understand the impact of this patently offensive expressive activity.”

There are some things that really need to change within our society. Hate mongering and racism are two of the biggest. Truth be known, we will never rid ourselves of those two things. They exist on both sides of the fence. It’s up to those of us who can see the problem to try to turn the tide. It’s time to judge people by the content of their character.

Corruption at the State's Highest Office

Thank you U.S. District Judge James R. Spencer for denying the request of five former State Attorney Generals (AGs) who tried to get the courts to dismiss the 11 of 14 corruption charges against former Governor Bob McDonnell, according to an Olympia Meola story in the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Their argument that basically he was only doing what everyone else had done doesn’t mean we should let him off the hook. In fact, if we follow the real logic path here, it means we ought to be seeking corruption charges against those former governors who apparently also took advantage of being the top dog in Virginia.

To say that this whole chapter of McDonnell’s plight is wrong is like saying Jerry Sandusky loved kids. There is something desperately sad about situations in which people in power take advantage of those situations. Taking a gift here and there is not a problem, but taking more than a hundred thousand dollars in cash and gifts shows a lack of moral turpitude.

Some may say, "but McDonnell did so many good things for the state." But when this kind of stuff turns up it naturally leads a person to speculate about what other backroom deals were going down that for one reason or another we never get a whiff of. Apparently, if we take the word of these five former AGs to heart, there is plenty to go around.

Does this not reek of the kind of logic parents might use against their kids? “If Johnny jumped off the Varina-Enon Bridge would you too?”

Uh oh, is what it means to me. If that kind of tacit approval of “gift accepting” is commonplace in the commonwealth then how can anyone prosecute any other elected official for bribery? How is it that numerous Richmond city council members get rung up for taking bribes or selling influence when all they are doing is following the lead as represented in our highest state office? Come on, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Or as the jailhouse mantra goes, “Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.”

While I realize the former governor is in the fight of his life, isn’t there just a tad bit of poetic justice in this? For years, McDonnell prosecuted people for doing just what he and his wife did. McDonnell is not a dumb person. He’s educated, he’s a lawyer, and he has a certain amount of savvy. It’s jarring to think that he would get caught up in a scandal like this, unless he felt somehow his actions were outside the bounds of the law.

So what do you think? Do you think the McDonnell’s were aware of what they were doing? Do you think that former Star Scientific CEO Jonnie R. Williams Sr. was just offering to help the family out to the tune of over $165,000? Or is it more likely that the family was in dire financial straits and saw this as a way out of their dilemma. After all, doesn’t everyone need a $20,000 wedding reception for their daughter?

This case, perhaps more than any other bribery cases, needs to be heard in court. There needs to be a finding and representation of facts in the court of law. And just perhaps the McDonnell’s are innocent. If so, they will be cleared and the wheels of justice will roll on. But the law of the land needs to apply to all the state’s citizens, especially those who represent the residents. If we can’t trust them, who are we supposed to trust?