Lansing millage increase may get vote tonight

As officials in the city of Lansing race toward the end of their budget process, a proposal to increase the city’s property tax rate by .4 mills has surfaced and could be voted on as soon as Monday night.

The proposal, put forth by Councilmember Brian Jeffries, came to light on Thursday afternoon during a budget hearing. The Council promptly put up an internet survey asking residents to sound off on the proposal.

This proposal comes after weeks of budget hearings based on Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero’s proposed fiscal year 2010-2011 budget. That budget would shorten the city’s 550 person work force’s work week to 36 hours by condensing the hours of operation in the city from a traditional Monday-Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. schedule to a Monday to Thursday, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. schedule.

But council members are troubled by the plan to shutter city hall on Fridays, and proposed the .4 mill tax increase — which does not require voter approval — as an alternative. The plan also calls for 13 furlough days for staff, and more concessions from police and fire unions.

In Lansing, the mayor proposes a budget, which the City Council can either approve in whole, amend and adopt, or completely replace and adopt. Once Council has acted the Mayor can sign or veto the budget. If vetoed, the budget goes back to City Council where a six person super majority must vote to over-ride the veto. There are eight positions on City Council, four ward representatives and four at-large posts.

Increasing taxes is something Bernero and his administration oppose. His chief of staff told the Lansing State Journal a tax increase was rejected by the mayor’s administration because “it would place too much of a burden on business and residents.”

According to the Lansing State Journal, the increase would mean a home with an assessed value of $100,000 (which means it is taxed at half that value, or $50,000) would pay $20 more a year in property taxes. If approved by the city, the increase would begin to be collected in the summer tax bills.

Also in Bernero’s plan, says Councilmember Carol Wood, is a plan to eliminate many currently vacant positions — including 11 positions in the city’s police department. The city is also facing a wave of early retirements, Wood said, with 80 employees requesting the paperwork to be considered for the early out. The city is planning on 16 police officers retiring this year as well, and Wood points out the city has not prepared to fill those coming vacancies, let alone the current ones.

That could leave the city with 27 fewer police officers than it had previously. And this comes as the city is facing an up-tick in violent crimes, experiencing seven murders since January 1 including three in 33 hours. The city has seen 11 murders per year for the past several years, including when the city was terrorized by convicted serial killer Matthew Macon in 2005.

As a result of budget constraints and low staffing levels, the Lansing Police have directed victims of property crimes to go to the local police precinct to file a complaint, rather than dispatching officers to take the complaints, says Wood.

Of course, all of this is playing out in the glaring spotlight of Bernero’s gubernatorial hopes. The mayor is seeking the Democratic nomination for governor and is squaring off with Redford Democrat and Speaker of the Michigan House Andy Dillon and Rep. Alma Wheeler Smith. And it presents a potential political bind for Bernero. He’s already said he is opposed to raising taxes, but cuts to public safety open him up to attacks from his opponents.

Dillon has his own problems when it comes to revenue and taxes. As the leader of the House Democrats, he cut a deal with Republican Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop last year to make hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts to the state budget rather than raise revenue. $144 million was cut from state revenue sharing to municipalities, the bulk of which goes to police and fire protection.

The cuts necessitated by Dillon’s budget deal mean Lansing is hardly alone in having to reduce the number of police on the streets. Grand Rapids was forced to lay off 41 police officers and 28 firefighters in the wake of those cuts, prompting local officials there to look at raising local taxes as well. Several communities in West Michigan have recently passed millage increases to avoid public safety cuts.

And it looks as though things could get even worse for this year’s budget negotiations in the state legislature. The state is facing an expected $1.8 billion deficit and, so far, Dillon has done little to look for new revenue to stave off even deeper cuts.

Dillon told the Michigan Messenger that the cuts-only budget his staff had prepared was only to help motivate those affected by potential cuts to get involved and pressure the Republican-led Senate to raise more revenue, but Alma Wheeler Smith said that was the same strategy Dillon used last year that ended up producing a budget with only steep cuts in the end.