Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Questions for Tonight's Commissioners Chat

The below email was sent to the Town for tonight's chat.  This may be the only time there is a public forum for people to speak on the proposed millions in CIP spending.  Hopefully, the public will be provided this information before any votes occur...



From: Rick Short <rick_clt@yahoo.com>
To: "townboard@townofdavidson.org" <townboard@townofdavidson.org>
Sent: Tuesday, October 30, 2012 6:51 AM
Subject: Questions for tonight's chat...




Members of the Board and Staff,
 
Do you think answers will be available to the below at tonight's chat? In light of the good news from MiC I'm hopeful some of these can now be answered before you decide to go forward. In my opinion, these are questions the Board should answer for the public before voting on the CIP. Without answers to these it is very difficult for citizens to have the necessary parameters to judge the impact of the CIP decision.
 
1. How much debt is Davidson willing to owe Mooresville as part of this spending plan? What is the expected debt for the current fiscal year and is this based on the new 30% ownership level?
 
2. What are the growth projections and timelines provided and supported by Mi-Connection management which will result in lower annual subsidies from Davidson? Based on the MiC presentation last week, these should be available.
 
3. Based on the combined proposed spending and the debt payoff to Mooresville, when can Davidson citizens possibly expect to see any lowering of tax rates and/or fees which have been kept artificially high due to the years of Mi-Connection subsidies? If the answer is “never” or “we don’t know”, that’s fine. However, the public has expected all along that some relief would be coming when the subsidies were lowered.
 
4. What is the total cost of the proposed new personnel extrapolated out for the life of this spending plan? Specifically, I’m interested in the plans to move from a level C to level B service for Public Works and the costs to operate the proposed new fire station.
 
5. If the Red Line goes forward, will the Board commit to requiring the Red Line pay for whatever costs are not covered by the federal grant for the proposed Beaty St corridor project within the CIP? If not, why not? The Red Line project plans published to date indicate roughly $1.3 million for this same corridor. Not requiring this payment as a precondition for Town approval of the Red Line will effectively be leaving a portion of this money on the table.
 
I've asked some of these questions over the past few weeks, but the answers were not certain. I'm hoping they can be made public before you vote.
 
Thanks,
 
Rick Short

 
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