2011-04-27 Cost of Government Commission Minutes

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But I would be paying $3,000, $4,000 in taxes because that is kind of common for a house this size in other neighborhoods across the U.S. MS. LEITHEAD-TODD: But you pay for schools. There are some differences. MS. O’HARA: There are some differences, but the bottom line is we are not paying our full share when we extend the homeowners credit and all the other credits, as you pointed out, which helps keep our property taxes extremely low. We aren’t really collecting for the services needed and the services that are demanded are demanded by the homeowners, not those necessarily who own the vacant lots. So, there seems to be a disparity here that needs to be remedied. And I don’t know that it would actually result in so much as an increase of rates. But if we make the whole system more equitable, I think we could collect more taxes without truly increasing the rates significantly. MS. LEITHEAD-TODD: Well, we’re looking at fees, we’re looking at transferring costs like we’re in the process of drafting, right now you pay a fee for processing applications from the department. What we want to do is shift the cost of advertising. If it’s an SMA application, I want the applicant to have to pay for the notice in the paper. So we’re looking at shifting. And those are not general population, that’s someone who is going to gain and benefit from the application so in those circumstances I think it’s fair to raise the fee or shift the cost from real property taxes which are paid by everybody to the applicant. So we’re looking at a few fixes. It doesn’t generate lots of revenue, but it will make a small difference in my budget. I think if I get all of this in place, I might save like $20,000 a year or something like that. So, we’re looking at things like that. MS. WONG: Any other questions or comments from the commissioners? Any question from you, Bobby, or statements? MS. LEITHEAD-TODD: I would get rid of the provision in the Charter that says you have to doan audit every four years of every program because it’s kind of meaningless. Not even the state tries to do that. Instead you should identify what programs you want to have an audit done of and set up a schedule. It’s also never defined what exactly is a program because you’re not going to terminate a department. And since we give mostly direct services there aren’t really a lot of programs that, the purpose of the program audit was to determine whether you would fund something or not. I don’t know that there’s ever been a program that we’ve ever cut in the county. That’s because we provide the direct services and so I question whether you need to do those types of audits. I think you should be more concerned about whether we’re managing the money property and whether we have the bookkeeping. MS. O’HARA: So those audits, those are done internally though. MS. LEITHEAD-TODD: The division that does those audits, before the guys who were in the auditors did combination of audits as well as provide services to the county council. And now you’ve created a whole new division there that just does that. MS. WONG: Kathy, did you have a comment? 34