Dover doings

By former State Representative, and my friend
David Scott

On the 10th of June in the year 1215 the first tax cap was signed. In a meadow at Runnymeade a group of Barons confronted King John and his councilors. They said “ enough of your excessive taxation. Our taxes have been increasing at over 3 times the consumer price index - you are running us into bankruptcy”.

Seeing that he was outnumbered the king signed the Magna Carta.

Pope Innocent the third was disturbed, because if the King had to operate within a tax cap, less money would flow to Rome. In response to a request of the king, the Pope declared the Magna Carta null and void. He called it and I quote “unlawful, unjust, base and shameful”. He threatened to excommunicate the GADFLYS that support A Tax Cap.

The Pope added any person arguing for a tax cap was “a cancer on the body politic”

The barons realized that King John was bad and 2/3rds of them transferred their allegiance to Prince Louis of France. This gave King John a stomach ache and he died.

Dover passed its Magna Carte (great charter) in November of 2007. Dover’s mayor, City Manager and some councilors were against a tax cap. Some today want to override it now and permanently eliminate it.

Their plan is to hold Dover’s children as hostages in their battle to punish those that organized and voted for a tax cap. They have issued this ultimatum - Either accept an override or the swimming programs for Dover’s children will be eliminated.

In the budget presented by the City Manager and its passage encouraged by the Mayor the funding for the swimming programs has been virtually eliminated.

The tax cap is not the reason to eliminate funding for the Jenny Thompson pool and Indoor Pool. The wrong priorities of the city manager and the Mayor are the problem.

Does it make sense to eliminate funding of over $500,000 from the Dover’s two pools.

In its place is it good budgeting to insert a new item of $230,000 for a parking garage.

This allocation of funding will benefit owners of a few large office buildings.

If a parking garage is a benefit to a few property owners they should come up with their own funding. Don’t divert money from our pools used by 3,000 children for the benefit of 3 property owners.

Another wrong spending priority is the enormous increase of spending of Dover’s Computer department. Last year $440,000 was spent by this department. This year the budget is $550,000 and next year a budget of $820,000 is proposed. This is an 85% increase in two years.

If the garage is eliminated and the computer department level funded both pools will have the funds to continue with funding of the for the past few years.

There is a third source of money available – fund balances.

Dover has cash balances of $5 million. The bonding agencies tell us we need $4.2 million in cash balances to maintain our double AA bond rating. We have $800,000 which is more than needed to fund both pools

Fund balances have been used before.

In 2003 over one million dollars of fund balances were used to fund the huge bonuses paid to a few municipal employees. At that time the city refused to disclose who got those bonuses. A law suit forced the city to reveal the names of the recipients.

Then there is the Coast bus service. The budget shows $120,000 of cost and no revenue. Dover taxpayers deserve an accounting of this activity. Where is all the revenue to offset this cost.

The problem is not the tax cap but poor spending decisions. Dover can live within its spending cap and keep our pool programs open.

The council should delay the vote until the end of June. What is the problem if the budget vote is taken in the last week of June?. Two more public hearings could be held on the 2011 budget and public input on the above issues and many other issues raised by the public could be analyzed.

The popularity of King John and his councilors plummeted after he and the Pope tried to destroy the original magna carta.

Dover’s Magna Carta must not be overridden. We must not burden our senior citizens and those laid off, or working part time with higher taxes. Our children should not have their swimming pools closed.

Councilors don’t be a scrooge and take away our children’s fun for lower priority spending.

The public will be watching to see which councilors will vote for a budget that punishes the children. The elderly will be watching to see which councilors will vote to increase their taxes. .Reject this budget and Vote no for an override.