City Budget Surplus

[BoulderSooner]

this is not one time money ..

[king183]

this is not one time money ..

How is this not one-time money? It's an unexpected surplus due to projected higher sales tax receipts for the fiscal year. If you were following the council debate over this issue last week, several councilmembers and the budget guy cautioned that this is not recurring and shouldn't be counted on for the following fiscal year (unless the economy continues to improve and tax receipts continue to come in over projections, which is not assured by any means).

[JohnH_in_OKC]

Why would we spend this one-time surprlus on recurring costs, like Sunday bus service (that precisely 7 people will use) or more police (who I assume will be on the job more than one year)? That's irresponsible fiscal planning. If you want to expand bus service or add police, then you need to put it in the operating budget.

Since this is one-time money, we should use it for a one-time expenditure or put it into a reserve fund. The quiet zone on the railroad tracks that was needed for development; putting it back into P180 to finish it as originally planned; fast-tracking the conversion of Hudson and Walker to two-way streets; extending the canal; put it towards another mile of streetcar tracks; ensuring the new parking garage has enough money to do it right-- any of these are better ideas than using it for ongoing, recurring expenditures.

How uninformed you are. Thousands of our citizens use our bus transit on Saturday & the same thousands will use our bus service on Sundays. You've got to realize we have a lot of working poor who are unable to work on Sundays & lots of blind & disabled people who would love for our public transit to get them to church & to friends' houses & to shopping centers on Sundays, but they are usually stuck at home without public transit.

I do suggest you talk to people who use our transit system. Most depend on it as their only means of transportation. Try to put yourself in their shoes instead of blowing them off & forgetting they exist. They need our public help & support.

[BoulderSooner]

How is this not one-time money? It's an unexpected surplus due to projected higher sales tax receipts for the fiscal year. If you were following the council debate over this issue last week, several councilmembers and the budget guy cautioned that this is not recurring and shouldn't be counted on for the following fiscal year (unless the economy continues to improve and tax receipts continue to come in over projections, which is not assured by any means).

except their argument is very flawed .. pretty much every dept increased their budget based on the city finance office projections ... this "extra" money is just using the same projections with more valid/recent data .......

so if this money is not around the next fiscal year it will be the same with all of the dept increases and every part of the city will have to pull back ..

[king183]

How uninformed you are. Thousands of our citizens use our bus transit on Saturday & the same thousands will use our bus service on Sundays. You've got to realize we have a lot of working poor who are unable to work on Sundays & lots of blind & disabled people who would love for our public transit to get them to church & to friends' houses & to shopping centers on Sundays, but they are usually stuck at home without public transit.

I do suggest you talk to people who use our transit system. Most depend on it as their only means of transportation. Try to put yourself in their shoes instead of blowing them off & forgetting they exist. They need our public help & support.

No, sir: How uninformed are YOU? VERY few people use our bus system. That is a simple fact. That is acknowledged in both of the news articles and by the councilmemebers themselves, which is one of the reasons they were hesitant to approve the money for expanded bus service. That's for various reasons, including an inefficient system that isn't predictable and bus routes that no one has a desire on which to ride. I'm not indicting the idea of bus service; I'm indicting a system those who are knowledgable about acknowledge isn't very good. That's why we shouldn't spend this surplus money on it, in addition to the fact that it will be a recurring expense.

Stop accusing others of being uninformed until you have the facts, which you clearly don't. Just because YOU ride the bus doesn't mean a lot of people do.

Lastly, quit using sophomoric debate tactics and accusing me (or others) of "blowing off the poor and disabled" simply because we question the wisdom of spending this particular pool of money on this particular project.

[king183]

except their argument is very flawed .. pretty much every dept increased their budget based on the city finance office projections ... this "extra" money is just using the same projections with more valid/recent data .......

so if this money is not around the next fiscal year it will be the same with all of the dept increases and every part of the city will have to pull back ..

Except that, in this case, using these surplus funds, we'd rather not have to eliminate Sunday bus service one year after it's implemented or fire 50 police officers one year after they're hired.

That's why it makes more sense, in my opinion, to use this on a one-time expenditure or put it into a reserve fund, at least until we know this will be a relatively steady source of funding. And that is definitely not a certainty in this economic environment.

[JohnH_in_OKC]

My views may be skewed by riding bus 7 & bus 23 often, which are both often full, the downtown trolley which is often full (when we have public downtown events) and the bus transit center with a usual waiting crowd of around 200 people. I assume that there are thousands who ride the bus daily. I don't often ride the bus on Saturday, because the wait times & connections are not as good as the daily connections. But I did see several riders waiting at bus stops on North Penn last Saturday as I was driving to Sam's Club & Aldi's & Quail Springs Mall.

I may be wrong, but I think our transit system would work a lot better if we had Sunday service & evening service so people could work Sundays & at jobs that had hours extending past 6 pm & had better connections -- a grid system (like many cities have) has been proposed. However, for many people, a grid system would likely involve at least one transfer in the hot sun, the rain or snow to get to where they need to go. Our spoke system can get people where they need to go with usually just one transfer (and they get to wait in our air conditioned transit center), but trips take longer.

[Bellaboo]

How uninformed you are. Thousands of our citizens use our bus transit on Saturday & the same thousands will use our bus service on Sundays. You've got to realize we have a lot of working poor who are unable to work on Sundays & lots of blind & disabled people who would love for our public transit to get them to church & to friends' houses & to shopping centers on Sundays, but they are usually stuck at home without public transit.

I do suggest you talk to people who use our transit system. Most depend on it as their only means of transportation. Try to put yourself in their shoes instead of blowing them off & forgetting they exist. They need our public help & support.

Your views are skewed - Metro Lift is available for qualifying people with handicaps and dissabilities with personal curb to curb pickup and delivery service. Not sure if it's available on Sundays, but don't bring the dissabled into play, when services are provided.

[1972ford]

maybe we should scrap metro lift and use the money on the buses and provide more services to everyone as well as save fuel

[Bellaboo]

maybe we should scrap metro lift and use the money on the buses and provide more services to everyone as well as save fuel

You can can go ahead and suggest that to the council...or transit authority...

[Snowman]

maybe we should scrap metro lift and use the money on the buses and provide more services to everyone as well as save fuel

It is ironic you say the buses would provide more service to everyone. Since metro lift does offer service to everyone, with the exception of the downtown trolley few of the buses will ever provide service to anyone living over 1/2 mile from a route. Even if we doubled Metro Transits budget and only spent the money on the existing lines buses service would not be that great, the city decided a long time ago to serve a large area poorly verses a manageable area well.

[Larry OKC]

There is more surplus money to be spent other than this $1.3 million. I don't have the article handy so doing this from memory. City Manager Couch told Council recently that they have some $8 million (??) or so in some account that they can use and it not effect some rating or another. They did the same thing last year and used the extra money for road improvements.

[BoulderSooner]

There is more surplus money to be spent other than this $1.3 million. I don't have the article handy so doing this from memory. City Manager Couch told Council recently that they have some $8 million (??) or so in some account that they can use and it not effect some rating or another. They did the same thing last year and used the extra money for road improvements.

yep

[Plutonic Panda]

An artcile I came across. OKC Council Considers Plan To Hire More Police Officers - News9.com - Oklahoma City, OK - News, Weather, Video and Sports |