A bad joke played on taxpayers

By The Editorial Board
Published: March 18, 2011 ? 3 Comments | Post a Comment

Danville City Manager Joe King’s proposed 2012 budget includes a 10-cent property tax rate increase and a 30-cent per pack cigarette tax.

Released in the days before St. Patrick’s Day, this proposed budget is more appropriate for April Fool’s Day.

Beyond the obvious truth that the government should never raise taxes during a recession, this proposed budget contains an interesting juxtaposition.

It asks the taxpayers to absorb a 10-cent property tax increase in a single year while the city government would begin a three-year process to “rightsize … an effective and efficient municipal organization.”

That means Danville’s government is going to try to match itself to the current size of the city. It’s a smart thing to do, but why should the process take three years?

Over the past decade, Danville lost 11.06 percent of its people. If a business lost 11.06 percent of its customers, it certainly couldn’t afford to take a leisurely three years to downsize. It would cut almost immediately, and not just vacant, unfilled positions included in King’s budget proposal.

Every estimate we’ve seen over the past decade has shown that Danville’s population was in decline. Now that the latest Census numbers have confirmed the estimates, why must the taxpayers wait for three years for a city budget to reflect that long-known fact?

Danville City Council needs to cut city jobs, city programs and city departments. It doesn’t need — much less deserve — the luxury of three years to get the job done. It needs to do this over the next three months — and the city government certainly doesn’t need to be talking about a tax increase.

“We need to look in every nook and cranny and do a lot of soul-searching,” City Concilman Fred Shanks said. “This is not a pleasant time to be on City Council.”

For that matter, it’s not a pleasant time to live in a city that’s lost 11.06 percent of its population and hasn’t fully replaced the jobs that were lost during a tumultious and difficult decade. Danville’s budget has needed to go through the downsizing it’s about to get. The process is long overdue.

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