Tulsa's Budget

[cannon_fodder]

There has been much discussion lately about the City of Tulsa's financing.  From revenue from the fairgrounds, to growth in the suburbs, to moving city hall, or directly talking about the city running out of money.  While reading the argument about the budget, it occurred to me that I had no reference for what a cities should/could or are spending.  So I invested my lunch hour looking it up, for all to enjoy.

First, and foremost, please at least review the executive summary of the Tulsa budget to gain a base reference before bantering off about something involving city finances.  I'm willing to be most people haven't bothered to look where our money comes from, nor goes.
http://www.cityoftulsa.org/OurCity/Budget/documents/Sec02-ExecutiveSummary.pdf

Access to the full (400 pages) of reports can be gained from here:
http://www.cityoftulsa.org/OurCity/Budget/

Now, a comparison with other cities of similar size, in our area, or often compared with Tulsa (I will be happy to amend this list if requested), sorted by population:
(sry it had to be an image file, but formatting data is nearly impossible on a forum)


Population is 2005 Est. (last official Census estimate).  Budget is the most pertinent I could find, usually 2006-2007.  None are older than 2005.

Discuss.

[Conan71]

I don't have a whole lot of time to read it all over this afternoon, but here are a couple of observations:

One area the city cannot control expenditures on and where the state could help out with their large windfall of revenues is on fuel and energy costs.  We can't expect police, fire, and street maintenance to consume less fuel, and city buildings do require gas and electricity to operate.

Golf course and Gilcrease expenses seem to out-strip revenue.  I have not looked closely yet at PAC and the Convention Center.  Charge more for green fees so the golf courses pay their own way, or lease them out to an operator and let the operator worry about making ends meet.  Charge more for Gilcrease for individual admissions and seek more community partnership.

[Conan71]

Now this would really wreck your day if you worked in the finance department:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070320/ap_on_re_us/lost_data_2

[Kiah]

Just so we compare apples-to-apples . . . .

Do you know which of your comparison cities provide K-12 education?  Which provide libraries?  Which provide health departments?  Which provide public utilities (water, sewer, electric, gas, etc.)?

Do you know which have regional and/or significant state support?

Unfortunately for our purposes here, a "city" is not precisely the same thing from one place to the next.

[cannon_fodder]

Kiah, I did not nor do I intend to analyze the funding sources for all of the cities I listed.  A "city" is a "city" and money spent is money spent.  I did not subtract money received from the fed. nor from the state from any of the cities.  Thus, it is likely there are a variety of discrepancies in funding levels. Likewise, the population is only an estimation instead of hand counting every person.

However, every city I have ever lived in gets most of its funding from sales and/or property taxes.  Every city I have known in the US provides educational services from 1st to 12th.  Likewise, every city I have been in 10% the size of Tulsa has library's.  Water and other utilities are most often run by cities as non-profits so their effects should be a wash.

The point of showing a wide variety of cities is exactly to allow for these discrepancies.  How does Albuquerque  get by with $600 per person while Portland needs $5,000?  What advantages do these cities have that we dont, what do we have over them?  What are they providing for the money and where does it come from...  these are all simple questions raised.

I thought someone might either have some incite or extrapolate from the work I have already done.  Maybe some "I know in Portland they have done MASSIVE public development.  The city is really pretty and well regarded now, but it looks like they are paying for it."

That said, I would greatly appreciate it if someone could go out and find a city of similar size with a similar tax base, regional funding level, and similar programs to see how they fund them.  However, I dont think we are going to find another Tulsa to compare Tulsa to, so we will have to make due with the closest cities we can find.

[Kiah]

quote:Originally posted by cannon_fodder

Kiah, I did not nor do I intend to analyze the funding sources for all of the cities I listed.  A "city" is a "city" and money spent is money spent.  I did not subtract money received from the fed. nor from the state from any of the cities.  Thus, it is likely there are a variety of discrepancies in funding levels. Likewise, the population is only an estimation instead of hand counting every person.

However, every city I have ever lived in gets most of its funding from sales and/or property taxes.  Every city I have known in the US provides educational services from 1st to 12th.  Likewise, every city I have been in 10% the size of Tulsa has library's.  Water and other utilities are most often run by cities as non-profits so their effects should be a wash.

The point of showing a wide variety of cities is exactly to allow for these discrepancies.  How does Albuquerque  get by with $600 per person while Portland needs $5,000?  What advantages do these cities have that we dont, what do we have over them?  What are they providing for the money and where does it come from...  these are all simple questions raised.

I thought someone might either have some incite or extrapolate from the work I have already done.  Maybe some "I know in Portland they have done MASSIVE public development.  The city is really pretty and well regarded now, but it looks like they are paying for it."

That said, I would greatly appreciate it if someone could go out and find a city of similar size with a similar tax base, regional funding level, and similar programs to see how they fund them.  However, I dont think we are going to find another Tulsa to compare Tulsa to, so we will have to make due with the closest cities we can find.

I wasn't taking issue with your initiative, just your methodology.

Yes, education is offered in every city, but in Tulsa, for example, it is provided by the state, through a local school district.  In Virginia Beach -- one of your comparisons -- education is funded by the municipal government.  It's included in the city budget.  Here in Tulsa, it's not.  That makes a huge difference in terms of revenues and costs.

Another example:  Mesa, Arizona has municipal electric and natural gas utilities; the City of Tulsa does not.

The same applies to other kinds of services. The City of Tulsa doesn't provide libraries through its budget; the Tulsa City-County Library System does through a property tax levy.  Same with the Tulsa City-County Health Department.

When I say "A 'city' is not precisely the same thing from one place to the next," I'm merely saying that not all cities provide the same kinds of services.

I hoped to provide some "insight," but instead -- as you suggest -- I seem to have provided only "incite."

[Conan71]

CF- Your image isn't loading on my browser and I tried linking the URL and it didn't work.

[cannon_fodder]

Fine points Kiah.  Sorry I was a little short with you.

I had a lunch hour, it wasnt a perfectly executed plan.  It would be far more informative to break down expenditures by department.  Ie. Tulsa spends  X per citizen on recreation. Then you get into issues about what is self funding.  

I tried.  [xx(]

Sry it isnt loading Conan.  Its just a jpg loaded on google's picasa so all should be well.

[shadows]

The budget  at the first year of incorporation  was $72,000 dollars.  [Ordinance 372]

A hundred years later it was 437.3 million dollars operating budget [97-98]
[Ordinance 19021]

Asking budget 07-08 about 550 million dollars or a 21% increase in 10 years.

Has the population increased 21% in the 10 years.   If it has we shore got a bunch of illegal's.  Population in 96' was 383,100 present estimates are about the same.

The Davis Gun collection in Claremore is leased to the city for $1 as long as it remains in Claremore.   If an attempt is made to move it then it reverts back to his heirs.   Mr. Gilcrease gave the city the building and his collection with oil royalties to maintain it.  It was stipulated that the collection would be free of any admission charges and house only Indian Artifacts.   Hanton and Wilson were the designers while Mr Gilcrease was the general overseer of the project.   When we talk about raising the admission my first though is "What admission charges?"    

.

[Wilbur]

My observations:

1.  Fiscal year 2007 has Tulsa's largest budget ever in the history of the city.

2.  Public safety received the smallest percentage increase of any area of the city.

3.  We complain about the amount of money received from sales taxes and the city's reliance on sales taxes, yet sales taxes only account for 37% of total revenue.

4.  I find it strange when they talk about what the increased money was spent on by department, that on some, they say SPI pay raises, and on some, they don't mention SPI pay raises, when all city employees, regardless of department, get SPI pay raises (if they are not at the top of their pay scale).

[Conan71]

quote:Originally posted by Wilbur

My observations:


2.  Public safety received the smallest percentage increase of any area of the city.

Interesting, they mayor ran on being tough on crime and increasing police protection as one of her top priorities.  As a police officer, how much do you feel she is keeping that promise?

[Kiah]

quote:Originally posted by Wilbur

My observations:


2.  Public safety received the smallest percentage increase of any area of the city.

I'm used to lame assertions by the FOP, but that's possibly the lamest.  The Police and Fire Departments are by far the biggest General Fund expenditures, and they came through recent massive budget cits relatively unscathed.  Of course they're going to have among the smallest "percentage increase" in last year's budget.

Adding a hundred grand to the Finance Department or the Human Rights Department's budget would be a pretty big percentage increase.  It's not even a rounding error in the Police Department budget.

[RecycleMichael]

The Police department operating budget increased by 4.6%. The Fire department got 2.8%

Municipal Court got 2.6%, Emergency Management got a decrease of .6%, RiverParks got 2.8%, etc.

The only reason that the Administration budget increase is higher than the Public Safety budget increase is because of the $3 million dollars more for all employee insurance costs.

The police department operating budget is now almost $80 million dollars. That is almost $700 per household per year. That makes $50 per household per year for EMSA seem cheap.

[Conan71]

So that begs the question, how many new officers can be hired and trained on that 4.6% increase?

[Kiah]

quote:Originally posted by Conan71

So that begs the question, how many new officers can be hired and trained on that 4.6% increase?

+4.6% of last year's TPD operating budget is +$3.47 million.  What happened to Mr. Fiscal Restraint?  Isn't a three and a half million dollar annual increase sufficient for you?  That doesn't include the bill for extra overtime that the Police Department submits at the end of every fiscal year.