Spending and Taxes
Recommendation: The scope of local government should be limited Families, charities, or for-profit companies can better accomplish many societal goals Rather than seeking higher taxes, local government should look to use existing revenues more efficiently .
Retiree Health Benefit
Recommendation: Local governments should move from traditional defined contribution plans for retirees to Health Saving or Health Reimbursement Accounts (HSAs or HRAs) Local governments should ensure a reserve fund t cover costs of promised health insurance benefits Local governments should also tighten eligibility criteria and reduce the generosity of retirement benefit to existing employees and those newly hired.
Debt
Recommendation: Local governments should put all debt to referendum votes concurrent with general or primary elections Governments should report the full financing cos and repayment plan for any debt before a vote and pu the tax increase associated with the debt on the ballot Budgets and financial reports should include a full accounting of debt, including the diverted revenue t pay higher-cost limited-obligation bonds, certificates o participation, installment purchase debt, and all other non-voter approved debt financing vehicles
Transparency
Recommendation: Put contracts and detailed spending information online. NCOpenBook.gov and Wake County’s WATC website offer good examples of accessible, transaction level detail updated daily Use XML and structured formats for data transparency. Data is only useful if it can be analyzed Open data standards make this easier Develop meaningful outcome measures, and hold government agencies accountable for results.
Economic Development Policy
Recommendation: Local governments should focus on making thei communities conducive to economic growth an business investment by keeping property taxes, sale taxes, and business regulations and fees low. The focus of county budgets should be on essential government services, making sure that these services meet the needs of business. This focus would include providing reliable sources of water and transportation services that accommodate the desired lifestyles of the workforce an the needs of industry Beyond this, city and county government should allow business investment to take its course. Rea economic growth cannot be accomplished by targeting some businesses for special subsidies while burdening other businesses and citizens with the cost of those subsidies.
Competitive Sourcing
Recommendation: Cities and counties should establish an aggressive competitive sourcing policy that includes most, if not all governmental services
Education Facilities
Recommendation: Local governments should minimize the amount of debt incurred for school capital expenses. A shorter need for additional classroom space or building repair must be weighed against the fiscal implication of assuming long-term capital debt. Planning for these obligations should include a thorough examination of current and projected revenue streams, student enrollment, population, and the county’s financial obligations. Local government officials can the determine whether the county’s tax base will support years of debt service payments. It will also provide a opportunity to consider deferring the project(s) under consideration or building up a reserve fund Local governments should encourage school districts to use proven, cost-efficient solutions that do no burden county taxpayers and that enhance educational opportunities for students. Last year, local government debt service for school facilities exceeded $780 million debt financed to maintain costly school-construction programs. Public/private partnerships, adaptive-reuse buildings, ninth-grade centers, satellite campuses, an virtual schools allow school districts to increase building capacity faster and more cheaply than conventional school construction and renovation methods. Public charter schools are another cost savings tool, as they d not receive local or state funding for capital expenses Local government officials should consider alternative ways of managing school facilities programs For example, House Bill 726, proposed during the 201 legislative session, would have given Wake Count commissioners the option of managing the Wake Count Schools’ facilities program. While this bill failed to pass there remains interest in giving county commission the option to oversee the construction, renovation, an maintenance of school buildings as a way to realize fiscal and managerial efficiencies Appoint members of the community to serv on facilities oversight boards. City councils, count commissions, and school boards should work together t establish facilities advisory boards consisting of citizen who have expertise in finance, construction, education and public administration. Ideally, these boards would spearhead fundraising campaigns, volunteer activities and public forums designed to improve public school facilities. In addition, these boards would serve a independent advisors and evaluators of school facilities programs.
Education Budge
Recommendation: While school boards control much of th educational, organizational, and financial operations o school districts, local governments can guide district toward maintaining an efficient, responsive, and high performing public school system Local governments should closely monitor count appropriations to school districts and measure th effectiveness of the funding. For the 2012-13 school year, local governments in North Carolina allocate nearly $3 billion — an average of $2,085 per pupil in county appropriations, supplemental taxes, and other revenue sources for public schools. Given the amount of money involved, local government officials have the responsibility to monitor and hold school board accountable for the use or misuse of local tax dollar allocated to school districts Local governments should pay special attention to spending on school district personnel. Salary an benefits for school personnel represent the largest single category of expenditures by local government in North Carolina. Collectively, local governments spent $1. billion on salaries and benefits for school personnel last year, accounting for approximately 60 percent o their total expenditures on public education. The us of local funds for the salaries and benefits of teachers administrators, and other personnel should be closely tied to various performance measures as well as adjusted to reflect yearly enrollment changes Specifically, school systems should use outcomebase measures, including test scores and value-adde analyses, to reward the efforts of successful teachers an administrators. An incentive pay program that utilize local funds should also be adopted to attract highl qualified science, mathematics, and special educatio teachers to low-performing schools Local governments should ensure a transparen public school budget process. All budget reports an documents used in the public school budget proces should be complete, accurate, and relatively free o jargon, acronyms, and technical language. Moreover taxpayers should be able to access and download al budget documents quickly and easily from a loca government website Local governments should revise the budget proces to include a host of quantifiable or measurable goal and specific strategies used to achieve those goals. Th state and federal governments provide several measure of student achievement, but not enough information t anyone attempting to determine whether a school distric uses its local funding to increase student achievement As part of the budget process, local government should require school districts to supplement state an federal data with annual studies, audits, and surveys providing a comprehensive assessment of school distric performance. These data would provide measurabl goals to form the basis of a sound budget process tha ultimately determines whether school districts spen local tax dollars productively
Fresh Water and Wastewater Service
Recommendation: North Carolina city and county water an wastewater services should be contracted to privat firms or converted into privately owned services
Parks and Recreation
Recommendation: Cities and counties should restructure their park and recreation departments to eliminate activities an services that are offered or could be offered by privat businesses and those that serve only a small minorit of residents. Local governments should also implemen user fees to recover the full costs of services that benefi only specialized groups
Public Transit
Recommendation: The following are ways community leaders ca meet transportation needs effectively within limite transportation budgets Provide mobility. Transportation is about providin mobility, not about reshaping the community or definin away the automobile, consumers’ mode of choice Planners should build to serve people’s needs, not try t make them “need” something else Privatize when possible. Local rules preventin jitneys, private vanpools, and other for-profi paratransport options are outdated — they were firs established in the early 20th century to protect electri rail cars from competition from upstart automobil owners — and have been obsoleted by their successfu use in several foreign cities Spend on transit options proportionate to thei demand. Spending should be commensurate with ho much individuals actually use transit. Only in the denses metropolitan areas does public transit (including bus rail, subway, ferry, etc.) attract more than 5 percent o commuters (see Chart 2). Over time, diverting resource disproportionately to low-demand transit options leave highways and roads unable to handle their high demand sufficiently Treat congestion at the source. The solution to troubled intersection is not to expand public transi options and hope that they will divert drivers. Apar from adding more road capacity, planners could deriv smoother flow through, among other things, traffi signal optimization, more responsive traffic inciden management, and increased left-turn capacity. In 2012 the City of Raleigh announced an overhaul of its traffi signal timing and expanded monitoring of intersection (including the ability to access signals near acciden sites) to improve traffic flow Avoid the “romance of rail.” For reasons discusse above, rail is a poor way of meeting transit needs. Practica transit improvements, such as better bus systems an optimized traffic signals, may not be as “world class” o exciting as rail transit, but they are more cost-effectiv and flexible and move people more efficiently than rail
Convention Centers and Stadium
Recommendation: Resist using taxpayer funds to subsidize privat ventures, especially vanity projects. Put simply, if i was a viable project, some entrepreneurs would hav recognized the opportunity well before elected official whose expertise lies elsewhere Oppose competing against private services. Perhap entrepreneurs have recognized an opportunity, making i even more detrimental to economic development for cit leaders to compete directly against established services Municipal convention centers compete against privat centers (such as the Koury Center in Greensboro and th Sea Trail Convention Center in Brunswick County) an hotels offering their own meeting spaces, and this unfai competition can be exacerbated by city-subsidized hotel and restaurants placed near the convention centers (suc as the Marriott City Center and now-defunct The Min restaurant in Raleigh) Demand true cost/benefit analyses of propose projects rather than too-good-to-be-true sales pitches Look at projects responsibly, including accounting fo opportunity costs and unforeseen negative consequences Avoid cronyism, sweetheart deals, playing favorite with the tax code, etc. Usually the argument that th government needs to help this business or this group o well-connected insiders in order to help the econom winds up being just a thin veneer for cronyism
Mental Health
Recommendation: Local management entity (LME) authorities, count commissioners, law enforcement, and communit activists should collaborate to implement Crisis Initiativ Solutions proposed by Gov. McCrory and DHHS Local governments should also study existin county programs that effectively anticipate and assess a individual’s mental health needs during a crisis episode Competition among care managers could als improve efficiencies and help spread best practices
Land Use and Zoning
The following principles would reform land-use an zoning regulations in ways that would benefit the entir community, starting with property and homeowners Simpler is easier. Base land use on simple rules tha help guide individuals in pursuing their own plans fo using their land Michael Sanera showed in his 2008 Spotlight repor “The Anaheim Solution,” how in 2002 leaders of th city of Anaheim, California, successfully revitalized it run-down downtown and light industrial zone by applyin free-market principles and trusting its landowners to fin the best uses of their land The plan adopted by Anaheim Mayor Curt Pringl and other city officials included the following features i their designated “Platinum Triangle” • Reliance on private property owners to initiat developmen • Use of an overlay zone to permit different kind of development in the are • Simplified permits and environmental impac report • Housing permits defined by distric • Loosened restrictions on housing permits an inclusionary zonin Anaheim broke the problem of self-perpetuatin regulation and found success with a plan that reduce government regulations and stimulated private-secto investment. Billions of dollars in private investmen flowed into the Platinum Triangle once city governmen got out of the way and trusted the private sector to lead Growth is good. Impact fees and adequate publi facilites ordinances (APFOs), which are intended t compensate the public for the costs associated wit increased growth, don’t solve problems with growth they create them. They essentially double-tax hom buyers — directly through property and sales taxes an indirectly through higher housing costs owing to th impact fees and APFOs Impact fees and APFOs are often justified b studies that purport to calculate the cost of growth o the communities. The implication is that growth i undesirable, which flies in the face of civic boosteris from time immemorial The boosters have been right all along. Those sam studies neglect to calculate the benefits of growth, whic outweigh (more than pay for) the costs. They include among other things, additional tax revenues created b the new residents, including property taxes, local sale taxes, utility excise taxes, inspection permit fees, an motor vehicle taxes In 2005, North Carolina State University economis Michael Walden studied the economic impact (costs an benefits) of constructing 100 new single-family home and 100 multi-family homes in the Triangle area. Walde concluded that the benefits in the form of local city an county tax revenues and economic growth outweighe growth-associated costs by nearly $77,000 per year ove a ten-year period Politics gets in the way. The zoning process shoul be depoliticized so that only those parties directl affected by property owners’ land-use decisions ar allowed to comment on them The original goal was merely to prevent on landowner’s use of his land from directly harming another, not to force the landowner to uphold the aesthetic and political tastes of attendees at large. In other words, only those landowners who can show a direct and identifiable harm should be granted standing to comment upon land-use decisions. Furthermore, many city and county land-use regulations give too much discretion to planning staff, planning boards, and elected bodies, creating a time-consuming process that drives up housing costs. Worse, it creates a favorable environment for graft, corruption, and favoritism in making land-use decisions. To avoid this problem, cities and counties must re-establish the rule of law. They need a clear set of simple, flexible written rules such that approval is automatic once a development meets requirements.
Smart Growth
Recommendation: Iowa elected representatives wish their communities to be desirable places for people to live, work, and visit. Planners should therefore take their cues from people’s revealed preferences: they clearly prefer single-family, detached houses, transportation by personal automobile, their own land and personal space, and of course such things as lack of traffic congestion and affordability and choice in housing. People’s preferences run smack against the planning theory of Smart Growth, which uses restrictive, intrusive, and costly regulations to impose a 19th century image of the densely populated, rail-oriented metropolis on today’s cities. Wise elected representatives would choose instead to adopt an approach to growth that respects and promotes people’s choices and freedom.
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