Dear Council and Finance Management,
In Friday's (June 8, 2018) Daily News insert in the Mercury News, I noticed two public hearing notices pertaining to a new fee and
tax increases. The new fee was for a "Regulatory fee" for a Storm Water Management Program.
The proposed tax increases were 10% for "tree assessment" and 20% for "sidewalk assessment" taxes in the overall "Landscaping
Assessment District" The public hearings will take place at the June 19, 2018 Council meeting. These taxes might also have been
raised last year.
Improved Transparency Needed – for proposed new taxes
These notices are easy to miss. In the future, can we have the Staff Report on the topic ready for online searching when the
Public notices are posted? While I didn’t find the information that I was looking for, I found Staff Report 17-114-CC which
recommended tax increases last year for Tree Assessment (3%) and Sidewalk Assessment (5%). Did these proposed tax increases pass
last year? If so, is it customary to try to increase these taxes again so soon?
At the City’s website, I only see the Utility Tax (Finance section). For transparency’s sake, I would like to see all Enterprise
Fund taxes listed together in one logical place.
At the City Manager’s Budget Workshop (May 29, 2018), I heard no mention of a proposed new fee and proposed Tree and Sidewalk
Assessment taxes. Nor do I see these in the budget document. The absence seems odd. Surely the proposed fee and tax increases have
been in the planning stage for some time. While the increases might be minor, it’s important to be forthcoming at meetings where
the public might logically expect to hear such details. They also belong in a clearly obvious section of a proposed budget
document.
Hard to Follow and Incomplete Capital Budget Section
While I'm sure that a lot of hard work went into the document, I find the proposed Capital section in the MP budget document hard
to follow and incomplete. The table of contents for the section doesn’t group the information into the kind of categories that the
general public would expect to see. We also need more summary financial information, including a Debt Policy and Obligation and
Enterprise Fund section. The individual CIP projects need to be better grouped with more overview information along with increased
financial specifics. For a best practice example, I suggest Palo Alto’s Proposed Capital Budget
[https://www.cityofpaloalto.org/civicax/filebank/documents/57409] document. From its Table of Contents to the individual project
pages, I find this document easy to understand and follow. Further, it builds my trust in local government – the City of Palo
Alto’s local government.
Improved Public Engagement Process Needed – Budget
The Menlo Park proposed budget document would have been improved with more public input, starting with at least two study
sessions. The first could be held by the F&A Committee and be focused on the budget document layout, content, and ordering and
presentation of details. The next Study Session could be held by the City Manager and his staff and be more focused on the
numbers. Even better would be three study sessions as Atherton conducts.
Unfortunately, the City Manager’s May 29, 2018 Budget Workshop was mostly a one-way communication because the public attending had
no chance to review the budget document before the meeting. The information presented was mostly a high-level overview of the
departments. While interesting, that information detracted from a focus on the numbers. Instead, I suggest that the department
overviews be presented during a separate yearly meeting -- or series of meetings --for ample detail & Q&A.
One definition of “Workshop” is “a meeting at which a group of people engage in intensive discussion and activity on a particular
subject or project.” The May 29 meeting did not fit the definition of Workshop. So I do not consider it adequate for its intended
purpose. This is why I suggest adding at least one public study session before the budget goes to Council for their approval.
Just reading the recent Almanac article on the City of Atherton'sthird study session
[https://almanacnews.com/news/2018/06/06/today-third-study-session-on-atherton-budget]on its budget and in looking through their
budget documen [http://ca-atherton.civicplus.com/DocumentCenter/View/5512/Item-1]t with its check-off boxes signaling commission
review (pages 21-22) I see the kind of public engagement process that seems designed around truly wanting to obtain Woodside
residents’ input. MP can learn from approaches taken by progressive cities around us such as Atherton.
Lynne Bramlett
