How is Mayor Walsh Funding his Pet Projects?
Our Orono taxes are proposed to rise again this year. The city council wants to approve a 12% increase in property taxes for next year and this is on top of increased utility fees. Our Sewer rates are the 2nd highest in the West Metro. Our Water rates are higher than needed.
We've paid tens of thousands for feasibility studies to develop several park properties, none of which the citizens wanted to build out. We're also paying hundreds of thousands to start up a separate fire department that has Orono’s name on it. And now paying for leased fire equipment because we can't afford to buy it for the Duplicate Fire Service we don't want.
How many times is Mayor Walsh going to dig into our pockets for pet projects we don't want? How far down are our cash reserves going to go? We only have 3039 households to carry all this debt.
No one has laid out the short-term and long-term maintenance costs for the $18 million (over budget) Public Works Building, the startup Fire Service, the million dollar Hackberry Park makeover and other wish list items that are not budgeted. Building these entities one thing - maintaining them is another set of costs. All emphasis is all on putting in new development and not maintaining what we have including our Parks.
Tell Mayor Walsh to stop raising our taxes, stop borrowing, stop leasing and stop setting us up for long term debt. Let's get back to a fiscally conservative budget and think about lowering our tax rate.
dwalsh@oronomn.gov
See our Youtube video here: https://youtu.be/K_59htY2zb8?si=SEscb6S548i3Cbt4
