In the final “State of the City” address of his mayoral career, Connersville Mayor Leonard Urban focused on the city’s finances and where it stands almost a year after a financial emergency was declared.
Urban recounted the events which lead up to the city’s declaration of financial emergency during the annual presentation, which took place on Connersville TV3 Thursday night, and justified putting the emergency into place last spring.
“We had a choice,” he said. “We could start borrowing money and live on borrowed money, or we could do something.”
Not wanting to borrow money, or cut employees or services, the financial emergency declaration seemed the only way to go. The declaration allowed for Urban and Connersville Clerk-Treasurer Julie Greeson to work outside of the union contracts with the city, allowing for expenses such as overtime and clothing allowances to be cut during the period of the emergency.
“It hasn’t been easy,” Urban said. “I don’t like to have to do this, but it’s the same thing you would do at home. If you were in a financial bind, you would cut out the things you thought you could get by without needing.”
The main reasons for the need to declare the emergency, Urban said during his address, are the decline in assessed value within the city – attributed in part to the loss of Visteon – and the tax caps put into place by the state, which properties in Connersville are hitting sooner because of the decrease in assessed value.
“It really has hurt because our assessed values have declined and the 1 percent (tax cap) hits quicker,” Urban said.
He went on to tell the city that since the declaration of financial emergency, however, the city has been able to trim its budget, maintain services and operate the city.
“I can tell you, tonight, it’s working,” Urban said.
He cited evidence of that work being decreases in the mayor’s budget of 8 percent, the legal budget of 20 percent, the city hall budget of 40 percent, the city council budget of 20 percent, along with savings by both the police and fire departments.
Since the financial emergency, according to Urban, the police department has cut $425,459 off of its budget, while the fire department has cut $317,694. Most of that was through cutting overtime, clothing allowance and both departments conserving fuel.
“I’m very proud the police shaved that off their budget,” Urban said. “Totally, we were able to save $898,582.38, reducing the spending from the year before 9.5 percent. I think that’s commendable. I think they did a great job and it’s helped us ... everything is still operating,” he said. “We’ve cut no services from anybody in the last seven years, and yet we’ve been able to reduce that budget.”
Urban made mention of Fayette County recently being named the state’s poorest county in a recent report, but chose that opportunity to highlight some of the positives of the community.
“There’s ways to judge being poor,” he said. “Being poor and being the poorest county in the state of Indiana might sound like a terrible thing, but let me tell you some good things.”
Among those things were the city’s water, which has been voted the state’s best three years in a row; the Connersville airport, which Urban touted as second to none in Class 3 Indiana cities; the overall safety of the community; the Fayette County School Corporation and its recent academic achievements; and the community’s willingness to give to charity, noted as among the highest in the area in another recent news report.
“We’re making it,” Urban said. “We’re alright.”
Fran Chomel, president of the Connersville City Council and long-time veteran of city government, commented that given how hard it can be financially to operate a city, where the city stands now with its financial emergency is a tribute to all those who made the effort to cut expenses.
“It’s tough to run a city,” Chomel said. “Before the legislature passed the caps on tax, the state would tell a city you could raise your budget 3 percent, or 5 percent, so the way it was done, they would take the present budget, add 3 percent or 5 percent, and that was the new budget. Then they simply raised the tax rate to raise that amount of money to finance the city. It’s not any more. I think the tax cap’s a good thing, because it makes us learn to live within our means ... but it makes running a city extremely hard, and it takes a lot of management. I think Connersville has reached that goal and we see here, because we have some money we can work with ... other cities, I think, are in the same boat but I just don’t think it’s been publicized.”
Urban believes the city will continue to move toward financial stability if it remains on the course it’s on.
“I believe if we stay the course we’re on, I think we’re going to be ok,” he said. “I don’t think we’re going to get rich ... I think we’ve got to run nip and tuck.”
“Stay the course,” Chomel added. “I think those are the magic words here.”
When asked what the city can do to shed some of its negative trends and labels as it moves into the future, such as being a part of the poorest county in the state and among the highest unemployment rates in the state, Urban said when it comes to unemployment, the statistics can be a little deceiving.
“A lot of experts are predicting the future (of cities like Connersville),” Urban said. “They become a bedroom community, which we kind of are. A lot of people drive out of here to work somewhere else. And when you look at those figures ... I think it’s only 721 people in Connersville who are unemployed. When you say 7 or 8 percent, it sounds (bad), but when they take our workforce and the number of people, it shocks me when I look at that.”
Jobs are available locally even now, according to Urban, but the mentality of some citizens residing in Connersville is what is keeping them from obtaining employment.
“I think we live in a society today that came up spoiled,” Urban continued. “And I think we have a society that, I’m not sure, if we had two jobs for every person that we (still) wouldn’t have a percentage of unemployment.”
Many local employers, he said, deal with hires who are not drug free, do not show up consistently for work or have poor work habits, which in turn leads to unemployment.
“We live in a society that is like that,” Urban said. “We’re not going to change it, so we’ve got to learn to live with it. All those things play in to where we are and what we’ll become.”
He believes that part, however, is the minority of Connersville.
“I think we’re going in the right direction,” Urban said. “We’re moving forward, a little bit.”
The question of whether Urban would be a lame-duck mayor in the last year of his term also was raised, with him refuting that he would adopt such an outlook.
“Anybody that knows me knows I’m going to work up until the last day and the last hour,” Urban said. “I’m not going to stop. I’ve got some things I want to get done.”
Some of those are further improvements in Roberts Park, working with Connersville Utilities to square away their finances, continue working on street improvements, keep up the attack on the local heroin problem and, once it’s decided, work with the new mayor-elect to ensure the next administration is left in a good position.
“We’re just going to try to stay the course and leave the city in better shape than we found it,” Urban concluded.
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