Too much spending led to Alachua’s financial plight

I appreciate Commissioner Boukari’s explanation of our current financial plight in last week’s paper. He explained without blame and put the best light on it. I, however, have a different take on this.

He says we spent an additional $935,000 to build out the municipal complex which saved us money in the long run. I would say that instead of staying within the budget, that was the amount of the loan, we over spent by a million dollars. Staying within the budget would be the responsible use of the taxpayers’ money, over spending by a million dollars is not.

A million dollar gift is a lot of money for a town our size. Is the college a good thing to have here? Yes. Has it supplied any jobs here, yet? No. Would it have located here, the most logical place for it, with a little less largess from the city? I can’t believe that the college would have wanted the city to get in this much financial trouble.

The other issue is that these are just the big ticket items. There was also a flurry of new jobs created, salaries raised, trucks, cars, equipment bought. In other words, we went on a spending spree.

I think there is a very clear lesson here. The problem is I am not sure it has sunk in with the commission. As quoted in The Observer, Mayor Coerper thinks that the problem was we lowered taxes too quickly. I like the mayor. I voted for him. But this is not the problem, and not the lesson to be learned. Let’s be clear. At the time we cleared out the city’s savings account and moved money from restricted accounts to pay our utility bill, revenue to the city had increased 250 percent.  That should be a perfect time to lower taxes.

If, instead of freely spending, we had stayed within budget on the city complex, we would not be in this trouble. If we had not been quite so generous with Santa Fe College. If we had been more responsible by half on these two things it would have made up the million dollars.

Here is the lesson that should be learned, when times are good put money back because harder times are going to come. Isn’t there even a child’s fairy tale about this? This is simple stuff, yet what we hear is "We lowered taxes too fast.”

Now that’s a scary fairy tale.

Duane Hell

Alachua, Fla.