Learn BEFORE you vote. (Not an official website of American Fork City.)

Month: November 2015

Thank You! (and some American Fork results)

Results

Preliminary voting results for American Fork City Council (from the Daily Herald, because the county doesn’t have them up yet) are these:

  • Brad Frost (incumbent): 2,198
  • Kevin Barnes: 2,057
  • Robert Shelton (incumbent): 2,028
  • Allen Simpson: 1,080

So Frost, Barnes, and Shelton take the three available seats. This is the result advocated here at afelection.info, and the margin is gratifying.

Proposition 1 (a county-by-county measure to fund roads and transit with a 0.25% sales tax increment) predictably failed by a large margin in Utah County. It appears to have passed in several counties where it was on the ballot, but failed in nearly every county (excepting Weber County) which is served by UTA — counties where 40% of the proceeds would go to UTA.

Many American Forkers watched the Orem City Council race with interest, because Debby Lauret, who led the American Fork Chamber of Commerce for several years, was making her second bid for city council. This time she won, finishing second in a field of six candidates for three seats. Congratulations, Debby!

Thank You!

All the candidates deserve our thanks. Serving on the city council is a lot of work with few rewards, and campaigning, though a shorter gig, is no picnic. Let’s also thank Councilman Clark Taylor, whose term will soon end, and who did not seek reelection. Few people ever see most of the heavy lifting a city councilor does, but I’ve seen some of his.

I think the voters deserve thanks too. Someone will whine about the turnout, because someone always does, but more than 2,000 American Forkers went to the polls. I’m inclined to thank voters for cutting through the rhetoric — some of it quite deceptive — and choosing three excellent, reasonable, highly qualified leaders. Believe it or not, good sense brings its own economies.

Thanks to Kelly Smith and her American Fork PTA Council, the American Fork Chamber of Commerce, American Fork Hospital, the American Fork Youth City Council, residents John Mulholland and Brian Rawlings, and everyone else who worked to inform the voters.

Thanks to you too, our readers here, and to the many people to passed around the information they found here, by social media, e-mail, in print, and by word of mouth.

Eleven days before the election, Rod Martin texted me. He wanted to talk about doing something more to help inform the voters. Ten days before the election, we met after a meet-the-candidates event and decided that he would get some signs made to point to some web content. The web content would be my job. The domain afelection.info was available, so we decided to put it here. By Wednesday, six days before the election, some of the content was ready (thanks to WordPress) and the signs were printed.

Between then and Election Day (inclusive), we had 1,168 visits to the site by 816 unique users, almost all in American Fork. 3,058 page views tell us that many visits were to multiple pages, and an average session duration of about four minutes tells us people were reading. Above all, these numbers tell us that voters care about the facts, which is a very happy thing.

Both Rod and I have been surprised at the number of American Fork voters who have gone out of their way to thank us — many of them in person — for doing our very small part this year. Our favorite recurring themes were expressions of satisfaction that someone was putting out accurate numbers in context and clearly explained, against some of the other numbers that were flying around; and this welcome refrain: “I read every page.”

We also thank you for urging us to keep the domain and the site and do this again in two years, for the next municipal election, and for the welcome offers of help in doing so next time.

We may post some content before the next election cycle, if we think there are things the voters should know but aren’t hearing about what’s happening at the City. We’d welcome help with that too.

In any case, we’ll do our best to be a reliable source of information in context, and to explain complicated things clearly. As we have already done, we’ll supply some general, nonpartisan information and some analysis and commentary which will likely be . . . less nonpartisan.

If we see a spade, we’ll call it a spade, even if other folks — presumably nice folks — are convinced they see a rake or a hoe or a rainbow. We’ll never manage fully to detoxify our local politics, but we think good data helps good people make good decisions. Slowing down the spin and adding context and perspective are good things.

So keep your sign or return it to Rod at World Class Auto, and we’ll use it again.

Meanwhile, may we respectfully suggest that it’s time to start recruiting fine candidates for the 2017 election, and time for possible fine candidates to start preparing seriously, if they’re not already?

Best wishes to all. Well done. And thanks again.

Where to Vote in American Fork

If you’re not sure where to vote in American Fork tomorrow, Utah.gov will be happy to tell you:

vote.utah.gov/vote/menu/index

You can also see a sample ballot there. The instructions for entering your address, etc., aren’t intuitive to me, but I usually get it right on the second try.

Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Just to be safe, take photo ID.

I’ll be voting at the American Fork Library, and I’m taking one thing at Utah.gov with a grain of salt. It says the wait time at the polls there right now is 32 minutes. I’m thinking it’s off by about 540 minutes. Now 539 . . .

Vote!

David’s Handy Little Election Guide, 2015 Edition

Unless I’ve missed something, there are two things on my ballot tomorrow in American Fork: the local city council race and Proposition 1, with funding for streets and transportation (including UTA, in counties where UTA exists).

Here’s how I’m voting and a brief account of the reasons why. More discussion of American Fork city issues is at afelection.info; I won’t repeat it all here. But tell your friends.

American Fork City Council

David RodebackI get three votes in the American Fork City Council election, because there are three available seats. There are four candidates.

I’m voting for incumbents Robert Shelton and Brad Frost. Both are fine city councilors — hard working, intelligent, with their heads in the details. Both have a healthy respect for the complexity of the job and for the need to hear and balance competing interests. They play well with others — which is not universal on the council. Both of them have been eager to talk and listen and explain, on the many occasions when I’ve turned to them for information or to offer my own thoughts.

Councilman Shelton has mastered the numbers. He’s a huge asset in financial matters — as good as former Councilman Dale Gunther, perhaps, though less prone to entertain with exotic aphorisms.

Councilman Frost is as concerned for public communication and for American Fork’s image in and out of the city as anyone I know, and as determined to protect and improve both. He’s doing dogged work to protect our interests in American Fork Canyon. And when he says he loves the city, he’s not just blowing political smoke. He loves it as much as anyone I know — in deed, not just word.

In the last few years, these two and their compatriots on the council and the staff have managed to cut the City budget by $1.8 million. They’ve demonstrated a healthy willingness to reduce staff in some areas in order to add needed staff in other areas without raising taxes. And they have dramatically increased funding for roads. (Rebounding sales tax revenues have helped.) There is careful management of road projects in conjunction with things which need to happen with the pipes under the roads. (Some challengers always suggests this, as if it’s a new idea we should try.) And they’ve helped the City quiet to restructured some departments to solve problems and improve services. We’re making progress in the transition from large town to small city.

Which brings us to the challengers. I have one vote left.

Allen Simpson seems like a good man, and he’s been personable when I’ve spoken with him. His past service to the City well exceeds that of one of the last election’s challengers (and victors), and he’s been open to correction when he gets the numbers wrong, which puts him far ahead of the other 2013 challenger (and victor).

However, AFCitizens endorses him. He’s passing out their flier. And he’s still parroting some of their bad numbers and bad logic.

I judge him more harshly for the numbers, because he calls himself a statistician.

Worst of all, when I listen to him at length on diverse issues, I find that the plow of information and understanding is set too shallow (forgive the agrarian metaphor in suburbia). I judge him more harshly for this, even as a challenger, because he says he has attended city council meetings for 20 years.

Worse, the ideological plow seems to be set a little deeper, but not by much. It’s bad that it’s deeper than the practical plow, and it’s not good that it’s still not very deep. As a result, the connections between his opinions and the realities of governance are only intermittent.

He’s not an ideal candidate, but he could probably navigate the learning curve and become a competent and useful legislator over time.

Kevin Barnes served (without pay) on the Planning Commission, which is huge. The people I know who have worked with him at the City speak very highly of him. AFCitizens has halfheartedly supported him, because he’s not an incumbent, but he certainly does not endorse them. He knows some important parts of the City’s operations deeply, and he has a healthy respect for the complexity of the organization and many of the issues we face. He doesn’t throw ideological bombs at quality-of-life programs. He comes across as a warm, intelligent, sensible, witty bundle of cheerful leadership.

You saw this coming. My third vote goes to Kevin Barnes. A few weeks ago, I thought it might be close. It’s not.

Proposition 1

Proposition 1 proposes to raise sales taxes by one-quarter of one percent (a penny on four dollars). In counties where UTA exists, 40 percent of the revenue will go to UTA. The rest will go to roads and such.

Opponents say Prop 1 is just a gimmick to shovel money to UTA, which is notoriously wasteful. The same people tend to say we’ll need mass transit in the future, but we don’t need it now. They say the trains and buses are often nearly empty. (When I ride, they’re almost always nearly full, but there or other times and routes, I know.) Here’s why I’m voting for Prop 1 anyway.

First, I’m biased. I like public transit and have relied on it when I have traveled to or lived in Washington, DC; New York City and Long Island; Pittsburgh; Chicago; Boston; San Diego; Portland; and Moscow. I’ve also been riding Frontrunner to work for the last six months. I love Frontrunner. I usually get 40 minutes of some sort of work done while sitting on the train, at the beginning and end of the work day. It’s very productive. And when I drive to work every so often — usually, when I’m driving home — I wish I were on the train getting some work done, instead of sitting unproductively in traffic.

We could debate our present need for mass transit. I think the need exists, and even now the system helps a lot of people who don’t necessarily have to own a car to live here. But it’s not the slam dunk it will be in a decade or two or three, when the population of these valleys has doubled.

Sure, we’ll need it then, they say. But where do they think it will come from then, if we’re not building the system now? I don’t mean grabbing up right-of-ways and building things. I also see us on a learning curve, learning not only how to operate an extensive mass transit system, but also how to govern it. The sooner we learn these lessons, the better and the cheaper they will be.

As to governance, there have been some major growing pains. But I am much encouraged by a conversation I had the other day with Utah State Auditor Dougall, who is not known as one of the Utah Transit Authority’s most devoted fans. He told me a number of very encouraging things which have been implemented in response to past troubles, to increase transparency, to give local governments more influence over UTA, and to encourage and enforce greater fiscal accountability.

So I’m comfortable with the learning curve we’re on, and I favor building more mass transit now instead of later, and I think a sales tax increment is a good way to raise funds for both mass transit and roads. Our roads need the help. Our local governments need the help.

One more thing. They say it’s wrong to subsidize mass transit, and we should let the market decide what is needed. Quite apart from large externalities (apologies for intruding economics into politics), please look around you today at the roads, bridges, traffic signals, public parking lots, traffic enforcement, and multi-billion dollar freeway reconstructions which surround us. Think about the government mechanisms to license drivers and register cars. Consider the cost of measures we take to promote air quality, which is a problem largely due to cars.

Now tell me we’re not already subsidizing automobile transit far more than we’ll ever subsidize mass transit.

Opponents want the legislature to take UTA funding out of the proposal. Then maybe they’ll vote for it. Call me a commie (you wouldn’t be the first, but you wouldn’t be right either); I prefer it with UTA funding built in.

Vote as you think best, but vote!

That Pesky Third Vote

We’ve documented here — in part — local PAC AFCitizens’ casual relationship with the truth and their well-established tendency to get the numbers wrong. It seems reasonable to wonder, why would I ever vote for a candidate they endorse?

(Bad numbers seem like an odd problem from a group which considers itself the real fiscal conservatives in the room and which includes a CPA in its leadership, but sometimes our passionate ideologies get the better of us.)

For the record, their flier endorses two candidates: Kevin Barnes and Allen Simpson.

AFCitizens flier, Kevin Barnes

The back side of the AFCitizens flier

 

Here’s why their support should not disqualify Kevin Barnes for a responsible citizens’ vote.

  • He’s not passing out their flier. (Allen Simpson is.)
  • They didn’t ask for his permission to put his name on their flier, and he didn’t know they had done it until he saw it.
  • Some of the fliers have been going out with his name crossed out — so someone is having second thoughts.
  • He’s not toeing their inflamed anti-incumbent line, and he’s not using or endorsing their bad numbers.

All I knew of Kevin Barnes before the first meet-the-candidates event I attended was this: he served on the City Planning Commission (a fine incubator for good city councilors), and those who watch such things say he served intelligently and well; he is highly regarded in the community; and his son has a street named after him in American Fork, which is one small way we honor some of our war dead. (I don’t present the last of those as a qualification for public office, just as one of the few things I knew.)

After listening to Mr. Barnes’ balanced, reasonable approach to government, and his abundance of common sense, and his respect for the complexity of even a small city’s government, I began to wonder: What had he done to earn AFCitizens’ endorsement? He didn’t sound like someone they would like. So I asked him point-blank about these things.

I’ve already told you some of what he said. My general conclusion is, he’s not one of them. They endorsed him because he’s not one of the evil incumbents who studied our road dilemma, judged that jump-starting reconstruction with a bond issue was the best deal for the taxpayers, and asked the voters whether we should do that. I can vote for Kevin Barnes, and he’ll be an excellent city councilor.

Notably, Barnes has stated that the proper level of debt and taxation for a city depends on what its residents want. This is at odds with AFCitizens’ vitriol. He doesn’t denounce publicly-funded quality-of-life programs, such as a library, a recreation center, and arts and sports programs. By contrast, the far right in Utah (including the Utah Taxpayers Association, the source of the bizarre study which badly misreports American Fork residents’ tax burden) tends to argue that these things are not legitimate uses for public funds.

In fits of pre-remedial economics, they like to declare that if there’s a demand for these things, the private sector will step up and meet it, and the public sector shouldn’t. In many cases that’s sound thinking, but sometimes it stumbles and falls over something called large externalities. Those are a longer discussion for another day, but the idea is that the overall benefits of some things are much greater than the personal benefits to individuals using those things, so the free market tends to underserve demand or need. For example, robust arts and recreation programs may be a major factor in fostering economic growth in a city, but only a small fraction of that benefit goes to people who use the programs. So the level of those programs individuals will fund directly through ticket sales and through use or membership fees is far below the level of maximum benefit — which is a good case for public funding.

In any case, it seems reasonable to conclude that Kevin Barnes’ name really doesn’t fit on AFCitizens’ flier — I mean that as high praise — and to vote accordingly.

If you agree, how about telling your friends? Share this graphic (or this post) on social media. Help them learn before they vote.

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Water Rates, Debt, and That Cash Reserve

Debt

One of the numbers AFCitizens gets right in its campaign to take down city council incumbents is American Fork’s debt. The number is inherently a moving target, but according to the 2016 American Fork City budget (page 68), the City’s total debt as of July 1, 2015 (the beginning of the fiscal year), was about $52.3 million. That number is projected to be less than $49 million by the end of the fiscal year, June 30, 2016.

On one hand, these are big numbers. Whether that’s too much debt for us is a judgment call. AFCitizens says it is, and we should blame the incumbents. I readily agree that much of it was avoidable, but blaming the incumbents is a bit too convenient and quite historically absurd.

On the other hand, the City is legally allowed to carry almost $200 million more debt than it has. That limit is not a single, universal number, and not all of the City’s debt is counted toward the limit (most is), but officially we’re at about 16 percent of our statutory debt limit. I am not saying we should borrow as much as we’re allowed, though I did favor borrowing a small fraction of that remaining margin for roads two years ago. (Most voters felt otherwise, though some now say they would vote differently.)

More than $41 million — over 75 percent — of our current debt relates to water, which brings us to our water bills. AFCitizens says they’re too high. That is also a judgment call, but I agree that they could have been lower, and I wish they were.

Kicking the Can Down the Road, 1990s Style

Several years ago, city leaders studied our increasingly poor water situation at great length and decided that the wisest and least expensive course of action was to borrow to install a pressurized irrigation system. They proposed a bond issue, which the voters overwhelming passed. Here’s the essential bit of history: had City leaders in the 1990s been willing to face the problem, the cost of the system would have been less than $10 million, instead of almost $50 million dollars. Instead, they did the “fiscally conservative” thing, kept taxes and rates low . . . and effectively borrowed $40 million from us in what was then the future. (They did much the same with roads, but that’s a separate discussion.)

The same timid City leaders allowed water rates to remain well below the cost of actually delivering water, so that our water bills were in effect subsidized by tax revenues. Meanwhile, nothing was being tucked away to help replace infrastructure (which is known to have a finite lifespan). Again, several years ago, later City leaders prudently raised water rates to a level that covers current costs and a good portion of known replacement costs.

As if this didn’t make our water rates high enough, most or all of the water bond payments could have come from impact fees from new construction, but then the economy tanked, and those fees dried up. So the debt the voters voted to incur has had to be paid through higher water rates.

Had City leaders and voters acted prudently in the 1990s, our water bills would be a lot lower. Fiscal conservatism is fine, and I don’t like high taxes and fees either. But sometimes saving a penny today costs us a dime down the road.

For what it’s worth, City leaders recently were able to find enough economies elsewhere to avoid passing on to the residents a sewer rate increase imposed by the sewer district.

The Rainy Day Fund

AFCitizens wants to blame the incumbents, so they keep saying — and candidate Allen Simpson has said — that the City has lots of money lying around that could be used to lower our rates. The none-too-subtle implications are these: current City leaders want the rates to be higher than they need to be, and water rates themselves, rather than being sensibly tied to real costs, can be whatever the city council wants them to be.

Which brings us to the City’s cash reserves. According to official sources, the statutory limit is 25 percent of the City’s annual budgeted revenue. Right now the City chooses to keep that between about 14 and 18 percent. (It fluctuates during the fiscal year.) It was 9 percent when the Great Recession hit, and more would have been a very good thing then.

AFCitizens says the City is at its statutory limit, when it doesn’t need to be. Their number is off by one-third or so, based on the FY2016 budget.

How large our cash reserves should be is a judgment call. Economic downturns, fighting a refinery fire which destroys much of the City’s firefighting equipment, or a natural disaster could suck up even the maximum allowable reserve very quickly — and two of those things have happened in recent years. To my mind, the prudent thing to do is to keep a generous reserve against the unpredictable, so we don’t have to go begging, borrowing, or taxing when a major, unbudgeted need arises.

Councilman Rob Shelton, the council’s resident financial guru, wrote this to me:

“I believe a true conservative plans a budget with revenue conservatively (thinking less income will come in) and expenses conservatively (thinking there would be an increase). At the end of the year, we use the excess to fund capital improvement projects like roads, waterlines, sewer, etc.

“This approach allows us to use the ‘plan for the worst and hope for the best’ type of budgeting. This last year we came close to the 25% reserve amount, due mainly to an increase in sales tax revenues. Good budgeting allows us to be pleasantly surprised at the end of the year with excess, rather than a shortfall. You take the excess and then apply it to one-time projects in the capital improvement plans.

“So this last year we took the excess and put it to work in the budget, and that dropped [the rainy day fund] down to just under 18%.”

That’s conservative enough for me, thank you.

With Fiscal Conservatives Like These, Who Needs Liberals?

We are in the bizarre position of hearing self-proclaimed fiscal conservatives argue that we’re preparing too well for a rainy day, and that the price of a thing (here, water) should be below the cost of actually delivering that thing in the short term and (when we consider infrastructure) in the long term as well. Are they making sense to you?

Even if they are, they’re getting some of the numbers badly wrong, as usual, and misplacing the blame for the numbers they’re getting right.

Learn before you vote — and please share the facts with your neighbors and friends.

Note: this blog post and the infographic were edited after publication to correct an error.

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