On September 18, the City Council met for a Budget Hearing to discuss the first proposed budget for the City of Sandy Oaks. The Committee to Incorporate Sandy Oaks (CISO), the group responsible for the incorporation of the city, never presented a possible budget to the public leading up to the vote for incorporation, so to be able to look at and discuss a budget was refreshing.
Calling the proposed budget Mayor Clement’s Budget would be dishonest. When Mayor Clement was asked who created the budget he simply pointed to Art Martinez de Vara and replied “The attorney did.”
Art Martinez de Vara stated he “worked with” Mayor Clement to create the budget. But what he doesn’t know is that one of the SOPAC Aldermen had already admitted in early August that Martinez de Vara was personally working on the budget. In fact, the Alderman used that point of fact to justify having Art Martinez de Vara, a Mayor of another city, be city attorney for Sandy Oaks even if it seemed like a conflict of interest.
As Mayor of Von Ormy, its easy for Martinez de Vara to create and tweak a budget, he does so on a quarterly basis. Anyone who looks at at a Von Ormy budget will notice similarities between it and the one presented at the Budget Hearing.
The City Council voted 3-2 in favor of Art Martinez de Vara’s budget without ever doing a line by line analysis of why items cost what they did. No one seemed to care why certain amounts of money were being budgeted on different items. Instead, the Council accepted what Art Martinez de Vara handed them.
The major problem with the budget, however, is that it required revenue from a retroactive property tax. The City Council ended up not establishing a property tax since Sandy Oaks incorporated mid year. But Art Martinez de Vara’s budget gives a good look at exactly what city leaders are planning to spend money on in the future. Especially since they so willingly accepted the budget the first time.
So what exactly would Art Martinez de Vara’s budget have done for people in Sandy Oaks?
Over 1/3 of The Revenue For Reserves
Art Martinez de Vara told the City Council that the “rule of thumb” was to place 1/3 of the revenue in reserves for future catastrophes. Of the $301,400 of revenue, $108,200 would have been placed in Reserves and another $25,000 would have been placed in a CD for a Permanent Reserve Fund.
It may be wise to place money in reserves for a “just in case” for the future. But to do this, the City would have to take money away from citizens to fill up the City’s reserve fund. This depletes and weakens the individual reserve funds of private citizens in order to strengthen the fund of a government body whose sole purpose is to strengthen the private citizens.
Biggest Costs Are Just Salaries For 3 People
Besides the $133,200 that would have been placed in reserves, the largest expenses in the budget are for 3 city employees to work part time.
- City Clerk Salary: $24,000
- City Marshal Office: $25,000
- City Attorney Fees: $36,000
$85,000 total to pay for 3 people to work part time.
Subtracting the $133,000 in the Reserves, the 3 city employee positions would account for 50% of the entire expense for the city of 4,000 people.
$36,000 is 3 times the amount the City Attorney Fees are in Von Ormy where Art Martinez de Vara is Mayor. It took a member from the audience at the Budget Hearing to ask why the budget gave the Sandy Oaks City Attorney $36,000 when the man who created the budget only gives his own City Attorney $12,000.
Martinez de Vara said the reason why was because he was doing all of the work that a City Clerk would be doing for the city and that his billable hours would decrease once the city hired a City Clerk. But that extra money would have come from the $24,000 that was allocated in the budget already for the City Clerk. Money cannot exist in 2 places at the same time. Even if a City Clerk were hired, then there still would have been $36,000 budgeted for the City Attorney.
A City Attorney who happens to be Art Martinez de Vara.
The Budget Is Missing $200,000
When Mayor Clement wanted the city to offer an official “Thank you” to the Committee to Incorporate Sandy Oaks (CISO), a member from the audience asked why, considering so many people on CISO told media reporters that to incorporate at 2.4 square miles would not be a good idea. It was pointed out that Art Martinez de Vara told Texas Public Radio that to incorporate would make property taxes “astronomically high.” In answer, Martinez de Vara stated that CISO had done a financial assessment in January of 2014 and decided it would be possible to run a city on mostly property tax.
Art Martinez de Vara presented the ballpark numbers from that assessment on July 8, 2014, at the 1st Meet the Candidates meeting before the election of the City Council. A review of that possible revenue plan can be read here.
In that possible budget, Martinez de Vara said the city should be able to bring in about $500,000.
- $300,000 from property tax
- $100,000 from sales tax
- $100,000 from franchise fees
Art Martinez de Vara’s budget that Jim Clement presented to the city council is missing $100k from sales tax revenue. This is because voters have not yet voted on the sales tax propositions that are up for vote on November 4, 2014.
Property taxes are listed as bringing in $250k instead of $300k.
Franchise fees are listed as bringing in $50k instead of the previously suggested $100k
No Bridge To Anywhere
Another source of revenue that Art Martinez de Vara previously mentioned that ended up not being on the budget was fines for moving violations. He had suggested in the past that because the bridge over I37 that leads into the community is part of the city limits, then a marshal could park under it and ticket people on I37. Moving violations can account up to 30% of a city’s budget according to Texas law.
The problem, however, is that the bridge is not inside the city limits. Art Martinez de Vara was wrong about the actual boundaries. This too was brought up at the Budget Hearing and Martinez de Vara’s answer was that a marshal can issue tickets anywhere in the county. Although that might be true, it doesn’t mean that the money for the ticket goes to that marshal’s municipality.
It is very doubtful that Mayor Art Martinez de Vara will be okay with a Sandy Oaks City Marshal issuing tickets in Von Ormy for Sandy Oaks to bring in revenue. Even if he’s okay with Von Ormy Marshals policing Sandy Oaks City Council meetings.
The Budget Doesn’t Include What CISO Promised
To get people to vote in favor of incorporation, CISO focused on certain topics that they said people could have if incorporation passed. Many of these were trash collection, fire protection, city police, animal control, and street lights. Here is a summary of them in Art Martinez de Vara’s budget:
- Trash collection – not included
- Street lights – $2,500
- Police – The City Marshal’s Office gets $25,000
- Fire protection – $0
- Animal Control – $12,000
Trash collection wasn’t included in the budget because trash collection will be a separate bill from the property tax bill. The city won’t be providing trash services for free. Instead, CISO’s goal was to use the new city government to force people to pay for trash collection.
The $2,500 for street lights might be enough to buy and pay for the installation of a few of lights. The city will just never be able to afford to turn them on.
The $25k for the Marshal’s Office is mostly salary for 1 part time person. A City Marshal does not even need to be a trained law enforcement officer.
Fire protection was important enough to CISO that a big fire engine was the first of pictures on CISO’s website slideshow. But to have money for fire protection, the city will have to raise taxes even more.
Animal control is a major issue in the City of Sandy Oaks, a city 3 times the size of Von Ormy that spends $10,000 on animal control. Only $2k more is allotted to animal control for Sandy Oaks.
Costs Are Not Accurate
Quite a lot of the expenses are too similar to that of Von Ormy’s expenses. Mowing, for example, has a cost of $10,000 in Von Ormy’s budget. It does so in Art Martinez de Vara’s budget for Sandy Oaks too. Litter control is $6,000 in Von Ormy and only $5,000 in Sandy Oaks.
The problem with having the expenses so similar is that Von Ormy is 1/3 the size of Sandy Oaks. Which either means Sandy Oaks will get 1/3 the quality of services, or the price will be 3 times as much.
Other Expenses Only Exist To Run The City
Other expenses only exist to run the city without providing any value to the tax payer. Most of the expenses outside of the salaries and reserve funds are simply tiny expenses required in the running of a city. Here’s a list of items that all cost $3,000 or less.
- City Clerk Office
- Insurance
- Municipal Court
- Communications/Utilities
- Code Compliace Expenses
- Elections
- Administrative Training
- City Council Expenses
- Mayor Expenses (which is 2.5 times that of Von Ormy’s Mayor Expenses)
- City Newspaper/Postage
- Newspaper Publishing
- Bank Fees
- Facilities Rental for Meetings
In total, these will cost $20,150.
High Taxes For The Status Quo
“Status quo” means what you currently have.
Art Martinez de Vara’s budget requires spending $301,400 of tax payer money. To achieve this, the city must double the property tax that people are already paying the county. In return, the double taxes pay for nothing that the county wasn’t already providing before the city incorporated.
Before incorporation, there was already minimal law enforcement, minimal fire protection, minimal animal control, and a few street lights. With Art Martinez de Vara’s budget the community will have the same amount of services, just with 2 times as much property tax.
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