Board of Aldermen — 4/11/17 Page 12
asked a couple of questions, and eventually got the question confirmed that the presentation contemplates
spending $7.5 million a year for 11 years. The budget that was presented spends $7.5 million for five years
and then spends the following 15 years to pay it off. The two were so far apart from each other. Essentially
the presentation said if you spend $82.5 million dollars the roads will improve greatly, but we’re only going to
figure out how to pay for $37.5 million of it. Which lead, and I'll take some credit, to changing the title. At least
the people in the audience recognize there’s an inconsistency there. The assertion is we will figure it out later.
Let’s change the title that what we’re doing now is only budgeting for five years but we'll figure out the rest of it
later is the assertion.
| don’t like the idea of the presentation and the budget, the sales pitch and the cost being so far apart from
each other. If you look at the quantitative numbers, there is a better way. There is ahappy medium. We don’t
need to spend $7.5 million every year for the next 20 years. We could get away with $4 million. We can get
away with $5 million, and that we can afford. The problem with the $7.5 million bond, which the vote today is
for just this bond, that’s all we’re voting on today, and even if you have faith that we will figure out how to pay
for the rest of it, the current bond obligates all our available road paving resources for the next 20 years. The
current bond vote is we’re going to spend all that money in five years and we will have nothing left for the next
15 years. That’s what this vote is for. That’s the reality of it. That's the black and white.
You can believe that that is silly to think that we’re not going to do any paving for 15 years after the first five
years. | agree. But that’s the part where you try to recognize the difference between a 500 horsepower car
and 50 miles per gallon. We have something that looks allegedly self-contained that isn’t going to raise the
taxes but when you actually go and reconcile how you are actually going to pay for the paving beyond the first
five years that’s when the devil is in the details. | mentioned this at the Budget Review Committee. | said this
is a great idea of paying for some money upfront with a bond so you can catch up with the roads, get them in
position so they are not failing so quickly, but don’t let the bond be so large that you have exhausted every
penny available to you. Why not go somewhere in-between? Use the simulation to think about it more. Find
an approach we can actually afford that actually accomplishes the maximize of it. That was discarded out of
hand.
| recommend highly that you vote no for this particular bond. There is a better way. Thank you.
Alderman Siegel
Let’s look at where this came from. With all due respect to my colleague, a grizzle veteran of two budget
committee meetings came in and did not understand where this came from. $7.5 million is sort of a magic
number because it is the most amount of paving that we can actually accomplish per year in the city given the
Alderman Moriarty
By the way, personal privilege. May |?
Alderman Siegel
In the middle of my sentence?
Alderman Moriarty
Personal privilege, the motion takes precedence over the current speaker. Some people often misuse the
phrase...
President McCarthy
Alderman Moriarty, move on to your point of personal privilege please.
