Planners hash out details of Evansville-Vanderburgh County merger proposal

EVANSVILLE — Packed meeting rooms bespeak the sound and fury of Evansville-Vanderburgh County government consolidation's most controversial elements — public safety and governance.

For the nuts and bolts of an evolving proposal to combine two local governments, you have to go to the issues under study by subcommittees with less exciting names — planning and zoning, infrastructure, tax and finance, parks and recreation.

Susan Helfrich, a member of two of the Evansville-Vanderburgh County Reorganization Committee's subcommittees, said the three- and four-member groups have "very quickly and very quietly done an amazing amount of work."

"I don't know what I would have done if I'd had a full-time job," said Helfrich, who retired in 2008 after a 25-year career as executive director of the Evansville Bar Association.

"The people who are doing this work love this community. Everybody wants to make it better."

Final reports to the full reorganization committee are in varying stages of development, but here are the highlights of the work done so far by the less talked about subcommittees:

Infrastructure

The infrastructure subcommittee has tentatively recommended what reorganization committee chairwoman Rebecca Kasha jokingly calls "the unified garage" — consolidation of engineering and street and road departments under the city Division of Transportation and Services.

While the existing county Highway Department and Division of Transportation and Services' garages would remain in use, the infrastructure subcommittee envisions a single department head required to hold professional credentials.

The superintendent of the consolidated operation would be appointed and supervised by the mayor and would operate from the current city garage on Waterworks Road. An assistant superintendent — a newly created position — would work from what is now the county Highway Department garage.

The positions of city and county engineer and county highway supervisor would be assimilated into the new consolidated operation.

Although the infrastructure subcommittee envisions long-term savings in middle management positions through attrition, its primary stated goal is efficiency of operations.

The Highway Department, for example, paves county-maintained roads while the city Division of Transportation and Services contracts out the paving of city-maintained roads and parking lots, sometimes to the Highway Department.

H. Ray Hoops, chairman of the infrastructure subcommittee, said a merger should produce a more efficient mix of self-paving and contracting.

"Then you could use (former county Highway Department crews) for as much as they could do, for projects that would be optimal for their capabilities, before contracting out to (private contractors)," Hoops said. "You get better coordination."

No large impact on local property taxes would be envisioned even if saving money was the primary goal.

The $3.9 million Highway Department budget is funded by state gasoline tax proceeds, and is sometimes supplemented by the general fund. Likewise, the Division of Transportation and Services' $3.6 million budget is funded by the state Motor Vehicle Gas Tax.

Other highlights of the infrastructure subcommittee's findings to this point:

Finance and tax

The heart of the finance and tax subcommittee's draft plan is its proposal for separate taxing districts.

These would include a general services district to encompass the entire county, in which property taxes would fund the costs of nonfee-based services provided to all residents. An urban services district would mirror the city's boundaries. City taxpayers would pay for services to city residents, primarily those provided by the Evansville Fire Department and Metropolitan Evansville Transit System.

The town of Darmstadt, which is not participating in the consolidation, would have its own taxing district, the town services district. Taxpayers there would continue to pay the town tax rate.

All taxpayers would continue to pay township tax rates because the consolidation planners have no authority to reform township government. All separate authorities now taxed countywide would continue.

The $64,000 question is how all of this would affect tax rates as the burden of paying for local government is redistributed.

Ed Hafer Jr., the finance and tax subcommittee's chairman, says the group still is working on an advisory model using 2010 city and county budget figures and 2009-pay-2010 tax rates.

Determining how much of the costs of running government would be borne by the different districts' tax rates is a matter of variables, Hafer said.

"It's really going to come down to the assessed valuation in the entire county and what's the assessed valuation of the urban district?" he said.

Much also will depend on whether the Evansville Police Department and the Vanderburgh County Sheriff's Office are consolidated.

A single merged law enforcement agency would not necessarily mean the costs of operating it would be equally spread across the entire general services district's assessed value.

"You could say that the urban district has a more intensive law enforcement requirement and therefore they should pay a higher percentage of it," Hafer said.

"Even though the cost of law enforcement is spread over the entire county, you could also divvy it up based upon the percentage of the assessed value that's within the urban district and the (percentage of) assessed value that's outside the urban district."

Reorganization committee members have spoken frequently of their desire to make sure property taxpayers would not pay for services they don't receive.

The issue often involves subjective determinations of services' worth to taxpayers.

Some taxpayers who do not have children object to paying tax rates that fund school construction, as do some farmers who say they resent paying the same school tax rate for fields of crops as homeowners with children and less property to tax.

Rural residents sometimes complain that they are compelled to pay tax rates that support library operating costs even though all the facilities that receive the money — facilities available to them — are inside the city.

Matt Theby, a member of the finance and tax subcommittee, said some such arguments are "mistaken."

"The goal is to, as best as possible, keep tax rates matched to services received," Theby said.

"A lot of this hinges on how people view whether we are one community or not. The entire community benefits from having a public library system. The entire community benefits from a good school system."

Asked if they could identify services for which property taxpayers are being billed without receiving any benefit, Theby and Hafer each said no.

Residents inside and outside the city also complain about other taxes and fees, such as food and beverage tax and water and sewer service fees, that are applied or set by officials not elected by them.

Reorganization committee members also have said taxes for residents outside the city should not go up to cover debt service on city projects such as property tax bonds funding Downtown parking garages.

The 2006 legislation that creates a framework for local governments to merge contains a provision stating that debt obligations incurred by a political subdivision — the city or the county — before consolidation may not be imposed on taxpayers who were not previously responsible for the indebtedness.

Likewise, pension obligations existing on the effective date of consolidation "must be paid by the taxpayers that were responsible for payment of the pension obligations before the reorganization."

Mike Schopmeyer, local counsel to the reorganization committee, said the city or the county could legally refinance existing bonds after consolidation to achieve a lower interest rate — but not to spread the burden to taxpayers who were not paying it before.

"That would likely be an affront to the statute," Schopmeyer said. "It would not stand up."

Parks and recreation

Burdette Park would join the merged park system, and its manager would report to the mayor, under a proposal by the parks and recreation subcommittee.

The 140-acre West Side attraction is Vanderburgh County's largest park and the only one managed by county government. But the subcommittee recommends it adopt the same organizational and supervisory reporting structure, and the same advisory board structure, as Mesker Park Zoo & Botanic Garden.

That would bring it under the umbrella of the Board of Park Commissioners, a policy-making body that already oversees the zoo and the Department of Parks and Recreation. As it stands now, three of the Board of Park Commissioners' five board members are appointed by the mayor and two by the County Commissioners. In a consolidated department, those appointments would be redistributed between the mayor and a Common Council.

The manager of Burdette Park now reports to the County Commissioners, but under the subcommittee's plan, the manager would be considered a department head reporting to the mayor. The park also would have an advisory board that would send recommendations and reports to the Board of Park Commissioners, just as does the zoo's advisory board.

"We didn't recommend the advisory board for Burdette Park to create another layer, but to be advocates for the park, which is a gem and wildly popular," said subcommittee chairwoman Kasha.

Merging the Board of Park Commissioners, Department of Parks and Recreation, Mesker Park Zoo & Botanic Garden and Burdette Park into a single administrative entity was not seriously considered, said Kasha, a volunteer development director at the zoo.

"I think agencies can just get so big they become unworkable. I don't think anybody contemplated biting off that big of a merger," she said, noting that the facilities are separated by several miles.

"I just don't think there's any real efficiencies to be gained in that."

Planning/zoning

Acknowledging their work is not as far along as other subcommittees, members of the planning/zoning subcommittee are trying to balance agricultural and development interests while also possibly reorganizing city and county agencies.

They haven't plotted a course just yet, although they have met with local farm bureau and homebuilders association representatives, surveyors and local government officials.

Gene Warren Jr., the subcommittee's chairman, says possibilities include recommendations to refine zoning codes and provide financial incentives to landowners in the interest of perpetuating rural Vanderburgh County's character.

"It's certainly an approach that we're considering, but our plan hasn't been completed," said Warren, owner of North Park Shopping Center and co-developer with his wife, Charlotte, of commercial real estate in the Tri-State.

Warren said he and his wife "actively farm about 600 acres."

"I want to be mindful as we go through these next few months to make a priority of preserving and protecting our farm community and the rural property areas," he said. "But frankly, the interests of others, including homebuilders and real estate developers, are also important.

"I think there are ways we can balance those interests so that everyone wins."

Theby, a member of the subcommittee, said the group probably will recommend keeping intact the Evansville-Vanderburgh County Area Plan Commission.

"We already have a consolidated planning and zoning function in Area Plan, and that is a gigantic step forward for many communities that don't already have that," Theby said.

No decisions have been made on merging other local government agencies with jurisdiction over code enforcement, residential and commercial building inspection and land use.

"I don't we're poised to say, 'Here's what we're going to do,'" Theby said.