You hear politicians say at budget time, that the budget reflects our priorities. Does it? Does it Really? Cuz I don’t like what I’m seeing, and I think it explains our little equity problem quite well, especially in terms of arrest rates. We’d rather police people, then help them avoid that route in life.
This will be short and (not) simple. After sitting through several funding meetings in the last few weeks, and watching the EOP grants get $750,000 worth of requests and only have $150,000 to give out and watching the committee talk about $2500 here and $5000 there, I’m so tired of this crap. How do we get budgets that TRULY reflect what I think our budget priorities are . . . or at least get a little perspective and balance. If we want to talk about arrest rates and equity, we have to start with the cold hard truth here.
Police
Police budget in 2000 – $35,197,123
Police budget in 2016 – $67,512,205
Using the CPI inflation calculator, that $35M would be $48M in today’s dollars. But they got an extra $19M over inflation.
Salary of the Police Chief = $148,011
Oddly enough, they only bring in $2M in revenues which appears to include the grants they get and obviously excludes the parking ticket and general ticket revenues.
Community Services and CDBG
So, the budgets are no longer comparable . . . groan. So I’m doing my best to be fair here.
Budget in 2000 – $4,308,643
– Community Services – $3,733,161
– CDBG Office – $269,528
– Senior Center – $305,954
– I know I’m missing some of this.
– Looks like in 2000 they brought in $9,546,546 in revenues from the CDBG side of things
– We had $9,103,150 in “purchased services” or funding to nonprofits.
Budget in 2016– $10,268,565
– Love that little note for 2014, “detail not available” – I think that means even the accountants in the finance department can’t figure out how to compare these numbers, or more likely it wasn’t a priority for them.
– Another lovely note says: The 2016 budget presents the budgets for the Community Development Division and Community Block Grant as one budget. Presentation of the budget may be incomplete in each service area due to the transfer between systems.
– There is $16,718,264 in “purchased services” or funding to nonprofits that are doing a majority of the heavy lifting.
Salary of Community Development Director – $114,301
This department brings in $9,971,842 in revenues which I believe is primarily from the federal government.
CPI Index should be $12,588,567.46 for inflation for the “purchased services”. Looks like they got an additional $4M where the police department got $19M, but if my memory is correct, this is because of a new program added for energy assistance – but I can’t really figure anything out from these budgets. It’s hurting my head. There was a $3M jump in 2009 and I think that was for an energy program. So I think they only got an extra $1M? And I think several hundred thousands of dollars was from an amendment of mine to fund child care, but I’m not even remembering that at the moment.
So, the numbers aren’t directly comparable . . . and its frustrating, but if we have an extra $20M over inflation, would you put $19M in police and $1M in community services (which I think is what happened but don’t hold me to it cuz of the Community Development budget debacle). Imagine what the community would look like if that was turned around, $19M for community services and $1M for police. Ok, before you freak out on me and tell me the police couldn’t cover the city because of all the growth, please explain to me how the hell community services is supposed to do it? With a growing poverty rate, a rental housing crisis, huge growth in free and reduced lunch in our schools, etc etc etc. What if it was only $10M each? What would have a bigger impact on the community? What if in 2017 we spent the same amount on community services as we did in 2000 for police. 🙂
Or easier yet, what if we just added $600,000 to community services and funded every single one of these programs? Every year. (I’m not complaining about my job here, TRC got funded, but its heartbreaking to watch us fight over crumbs year after year after year. And I feel guilty knowing that TRC got funded and others didn’t.) This tiny amount of money (Emerging Opportunities Program) could have so much leverage in our community – and do so much good.
- AIDS Resource Center of Wisconsin — Staff Review
- Breaking Barriers Mentoring — Staff Review
- Bridge Lake Point Waunona Neighborhood Center — Staff Review
- Catalyst Project — Staff Review
- Center For Families — Staff Review
- Centro Hispano Inc. — Staff Review
- Circle of Hands — Staff Review
- Common Wealth Development — Staff Review
- Cornucopia, Inc. — Staff Review
- Dane County Timebank — Staff Review
- DANEnet — Staff Review
- Design Coalition Institute — Staff Review
- Disability Pride Madison — Staff Review
- DSS Community Center Inc. — Staff Review
- Employment & Training Association — Staff Review
- FoodWorks — Staff Review
- Freedom Inc. — Staff Review
- Goodman Community Center — Staff Review
- GSAFE — Staff Review
- Heartland Housing — Staff Review
- Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Wisconsin — Staff Review
- Lazarus Liberation — Staff Review
- MACH OneHealth — Staff Review
- Madison Community Collaboration — Staff Review
- Madison Music Makers — Staff Review
- Madison Northside Planning Council — Staff Review
- Madison Path to Citizenship — Staff Review
- MDYM — Staff Review
- Mellowhood Foundation — Staff Review
- Mosaic, Inc. — Staff Review
- MOSES (Madison Organizing in Strength, Equality and Solidarity) — Staff Review
- Mothers in the Neighborhood — Staff Review
- Nehemiah Center for Urban Leadership Development — Staff Review
- Neighborhood House — Staff Review
- Rainbow Project, Inc. — Staff Review
- Tenant Resource Center — Staff Review
- Urban Community Arts Network, Ltd — Staff Review
- Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice — Staff Review
- Wisconsin Youth Company – TTNC — Staff Review
Ok, rambling rant over. I’m on pace to work 6 weeks or hours in a 4 week period . . . I deserve to grumble a bit. But this is much more than grumbling . . . this is real, impacting real lives. And we have to address the disparities. Wish the council would talk about this instead of themselves. Think we could get them to spend an hour and 40 minutes on it?
