Saundra McDavid

I do not support a bailout of city hall and borrowing money to fix a problem that Eagle city leaders created.

Mayor Bandy on Tuesday cast a questionably legal deciding vote and appointed former Councilwoman Jeanne Jackson-Heim and 11 others to review the options for decreasing the cost of Eagle City Hall, over the opposition of Councilmen Al Shoushtarian and John Grassar. Bandy’s appointment of Jackson-Heim as chair of the committee was voted down, with the councilmen’s recommendation that the committee should choose its own chair. The city is currently saddled with a lease that is “bleeding the city to death” according to councilman Norm Semanko.

Several years ago, using questionable legal reasoning to justify subverting the will of the people who three times voted “no” on a bond to purchase a new City Hall building, Phil Bandy, then a city council member, approved entering a one year lease for a building which was constructed on land owned by the city; said lease to be renewable for fifty years in a row. The lease agreement allows the city to purchase the building for a price in excess of two million dollars. Now that the bottom has dropped out of the real estate market and there is an oversupply of office space in Eagle, the one year lease should be a huge negotiating tool for the city. Accordingly, last year, Mayor Bandy sent Jeanne Jackson-Heim, to negotiate a better deal. She failed, coming back with only a small rate reduction which would then be tacked on to a later year. A great deal for the building owner; an awful one with no real savings for the citizens of Eagle.

As the city struggles with cost overruns, it now must find additional ways to balance the budget. Bandy, Huffaker and Jackson-Heim voted last year to increase taxes in order to accomplish this goal, over the protest of Councilmen Shoushtarian and Semanko, who recommended further cuts on the expense side of the budget. One of these suggestions was to lower the cost of city hall. The city has several options to evaluate, some of which could save the city hundreds of thousands of dollars.
1)Do nothing and renew the existing one year lease at the current overpriced rate.
2)Enter into serious negotiations with the current landlord and achieve a realistic lease rate comparable to other vacant space around the city and save up the funds to eventually purchase a city hall building.
3)Find a new building to lease, since Eagle has one of the highest vacancy rates in the valley, and negotiate a low rate for a short time period until the city can save up the funds to purchase a city hall building.
4)Get an appraisal for the real price of what the building is worth. Negotiate with the building owner to purchase the building at that realistic price, save the money and then buy it.
5)The fifth option and the one that some of our city officials appear to be moving toward is to purchase the current building without an appraisal, at an inflated contract price, and pass that burden on to the Eagle citizens in the form of a bond as soon as possible.

Last fall’s October 27th city council meeting provides some insight as to the direction Mayor Bandy, Council President Huffaker and Jeanne Jackson-Heim want the city to take. During the meeting the council had listened to a presentation from Zion’s bank about various types of bond financing. The bond presentation included handouts on how to “sell” the bond to the public, as if the decision to purchase the building and hold a bond election had already been made. There was also discussion by Jackson-Heim around the fact that the city could still “sneak” in a bond election during an off-time in the Spring since the new election laws do not come into effect until 2011. She also requested that the Mayor add to an upcoming agenda a discussion around appointing her to oversee the city hall process; foreshadowing for Bandy’s attempt on Tuesday to appoint her as chairman of the city hall task force. Councilman Shoushtarian then requested that a discussion about whether to seek an appraisal of the City Hall building be added to the agenda stating that it would be prudent to know the fair market price of the building that the city would like to purchase. None of the council appeared receptive to seeking an appraisal. In fact Council President Huffaker stated that he already knows what the purchase price will be since it is set in the contract at over $2 million. This is an alarming sign that he is receptive to purchasing real estate at an inflated price and passing that cost on to the public.

Jumping ahead to January’s city council meeting: a task force should be neutral and earnest in its quest to collect facts, evaluate alternatives and present the options to the city council. A concern voiced by many is that the Mayor fills his committees with people who are more likely to promote his agenda. This concern, was brought up in Tuesday’s city council meeting by newly elected councilman John Grasser who appeared doubtful that a fair and balanced presentation will occur. He suggested that more new blood; people with new ideas, serve on the committee, instead of an alarming number of people from the same group from which Mayor Bandy continually chooses to surround himself; the same group of people who have shaped Eagle, who were involved in city affairs at the time the city hall lease was formed and have already expressed their support of holding a bond election and purchasing the existing city hall building. Grasser stressed that listening to more neutral people from the community for which he is elected to serve would be in order on such an important issue.

Councilman Shoustarian requested that the newly formed task force resolution that the city attorney and mayor made at the last minute, (which notably has never done before) be made available for public comment before it was voted on. Interestingly, Council President Mike Huffaker insisted he did not want to hear public comments on this last minute resolution, which is another complete change in philosophy for him. Huffaker campaigned on an open and transparent process in our city government. In the past he has claimed that he welcomed public comment. This lack of transparency in a process that spends millions of public dollars leads to a much bigger problem of persistent and continued lack of trust in our elected officials.

Some of Eagle’s city leaders appear to be proceeding down the path of a major purchase without any desire to know the fair market value of the item being purchased. The city also appears to be acting like the one-year lease on City Hall is something more than a one year lease; more of a long term commitment with a 50 year term and a set purchase price. Are Eagle city leaders about to purchase the proverbial $10,000 toilet seat? The economics of Eagle have changed. Property values in Eagle have decreased however it appears some of our city leaders believe the city hall property is somehow immune from this.

Our city council needs to be looking out for the best interests of the people of Eagle; not the people involved in a questionably constitutional lease and those benefiting from it. Purchasing a building at an inflated value and sneaking in another bond election before new election laws come into effect is disgraceful. We should demand far more from our elected city government. All options should be on the table to fix a problem created by Mayor Bandy and previous city leaders. Is it the intention of Bandy, Huffaker and Jackson-Heim to subvert the will of the people again for a fourth time? Is Semanko going to join in with them? Eagle city leaders should not force the citizens of Eagle to bail out city hall and borrow money to fix a problem that the city created.

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In an unfortunate decision last night the City of Eagle choose to pad its own savings account by taking money out of the pockets of its citizens.  The people of Eagle will see a levy rate increase on their property tax this year; a year where so many of us are struggling to make ends meet.  The reason for this; the City wanted more of a cushion for the 2011 budget.  At the end of the four hour long debate, there was a workable solution on the table:  instead of a $700,000 cushion, lower it to the actual amount needed to pay the first quarter expenses for the 2011 fiscal year, which is $350,000.  Had that been agreed upon, there would have not been a tax increase.  However the City wanted more.  Council President Michael Huffaker and Bandy appointee Jeanne Jackson-Heim voted to increase the tax, while Al Shoushtarian and Norm Semanko voted against it. Mayor Phil Bandy cast the tie breaking vote in favor of the tax increase.

The latest trend in politics is to call a tax an “investment” and Mayor Bandy’s statement, “…the Citizens of Eagle are getting a tremendous bargain based upon [sic] amount of property taxes you are investing in your community” is a line right out of the DNC playbook. (www.cityofeagle.com, 9/4/2009)   We are hearing politicians every day in the news defending raising taxes and government spending by using the term “investing.”  And these same politics and political speak have found their way into Eagle, with Mayor Bandy recently taking 20 paragraphs on the front page of the city’s website defending his desire to increase taxes on the people of Eagle.  Add Councilwoman Jeanne Jackson-Heim’s reason for raising taxes “because our current taxes are ‘peanuts’ compared to other cities,” and we have an alarming situation in Eagle City Hall.

Last night Mayor Bandy accused Councilman Semanko of being “irrational” in his desire to help the people of Eagle by not raising taxes; asking Semanko “why are we cutting taxes just for the sake of cutting taxes?” Jackson-Heim offered insight into this bureaucratic mindset at city hall by repeatedly referring to the taxes we pay as “revenue” to the city.  She justified the tax increase because she wanted to maintain the “revenue” into the city.   When the rest of us experience a decrease in revenue, we make the hard decisions to cut our expenses.  When revenue falls even more, we make further cuts.  Not so at Eagle City Hall.  When revenue falls our city leaders raise taxes to try to maintain their spending level.

Recently, I heard a man walking out of a grocery store speaking on his cell phone and proudly proclaiming that he was able to put food on his table that week.  Many of us are in this same situation; doing what we can to scale back our budgets to match our reduction in income.  It is wrong for a politician to take money away from the people in his or her community, when those people are struggling just to keep up the basic necessities of food, water and shelter.

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At the budget hearing last night, Mayor Bandy claimed that no one was against raising the levy rate and thus raising the taxes.  Please write to him and the other council members to voice your opposition to increasing the levy rate, which will affect your personal property taxes in 2010.

all of the Eagle city council members and the mayor can be reached by sending an e-mail to eaglecity@cityofeagle.org. Letters must be received by September 8th.

My letter was sent today:
Dear Mayor and City Council;

I urge to you to take Councilmen Semanko and Shoushtarian’s lead in saying “No” to raising the levy rate.  Concerning to me after last night’s budget hearing was the use of semantics to try to classify the levy increase as something other than a tax increase.  If the property assessment goes down, and the levy stays at the same rate as it was in 2009, our property taxes would decrease.  Mayor Bandy’s proposed budget increases the levy rate in 2010 by 20% and thus increases the property taxes that we will have to pay based on the assessed value of our homes.  This eliminates the property tax decrease that we all so desperately need.  And semantics aside, increasing a tax when so many of us are struggling to make ends meet is irresponsible.

Also concerning was the statement from Mayor Bandy, that since four people testified on behalf of keeping some funds in the budget for the Eagle Historical Society, that no one was against raising taxes.   This is a classic logical fallacy that even my first year critical thinking students would have no trouble identifying.  Mayor Bandy did not ask those who testified what they thought of raising the taxes, and it appears he has not asked anyone in the city that he is supposed to be representing.

It was disappointing to see that Mayor Bandy and his appointed councilwoman Jeanne Jackson-Heim appear to be out of touch with the residents of Eagle, implying that we prefer to spend the taxpayers’ money on staffing up in order to have the personnel to attend bureaucratic meetings throughout the Treasure Valley, instead of focusing the budget on services that directly affect the residents like police protection, library services, and animal control.

And alarming to me is Councilwoman Jeanne Jackson-Heim’s statements and justifications for raising the levy rate, her refusal to answer my questions and her desire to rush the budget through without further discussions on reducing the expenses.  She was not receptive to any suggestions on reducing the budget, making comments along the lines of it being “wholly inappropriate” to be discussing cost cutting measures. Councilwoman Jackson-Heim stated that we should raise the levy rate because Eagle’s tax rate is “peanuts” compared to other cities.  What she failed to consider is that Eagle’s property values are higher than the surrounding cities, so that even with a lower levy rate compared to our neighboring cities, we are paying more in property taxes per household.  She claimed repeatedly that she was “okay” with raising taxes, that she “won’t apologize if [she raises] the mill levy” and that she is “perfectly fine with a small increase in taxes.” During a break in the hearing I asked Councilwoman Jackson-Heim by how much she was willing to raise taxes and she refused to answer me.  When I asked her why she would not consider passing a budget that set a more realistic reserve and eliminated the need for raising taxes, she became flustered and left the room.

Creating a budget that has a carryover reserve to protect against the need for debt is a noble goal, however increasing the taxpayers’ burden in order for you to reach your goals is not the way to achieve them.

Sincerely,

Saundra McDavid

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