By Dan Linehan
Free Press Staff Writer
MANKATO — With all the focus on a dire future of budget cuts and fewer services, Mankato City Manager Pat Hentges took some time Monday to talk about how the decade of the oughts has gone pretty well.
In his state of the city talk, Hentges said Mankato spends today about what it spent in 2000 on services like snow plowing, street maintenance and parks. This despite a population increase of about 12 percent from 2000 to 2008.
But the city spends about $4.3 million more on public safety than it did then. Despite media reports that seem to indicate crime is worse, the number of violent crimes are virtually the same.
Taxes on an average-value home have increased by 13.9 percent over the past 11 years. Some of the increase can be attributed to an increased tax rate on homes and a reduced rate on commercial and industrial property.
The city’s tax rate is the 62nd-lowest of the 226 cities in Greater Minnesota.
The city has built cash reserves of $9.5 million, which is about 45 percent of general fund expenditures in 2010. A 50 percent reserve rate is the goal, but that seems unlikely given major cuts to state aid.
The budget document, previously a difficult-to-understand collection of line items, is now being written from the perspective of how much each service costs. In the future, the city hopes to attach data to the spending to learn what it’s getting per dollar and how much needs to be spent to meet goals.
The city’s bonding requests for upgrades to the civic center haven’t gone as well as hoped, despite good inroads made with the Legislature.
“Maybe not, at this point, with the governor,” Hentges said.
Urban planning on the outskirts of the city has been defined and directed east by a major planning study, and downtown investment is directed according to another plan.
There are a myriad of individual accomplishments — including a new drinking water plant, a commitment by Wal-Mart to build a distribution center and the designation as a metropolitan statistical area. There are also new taxes, including a 1 percent utility franchise fee, a one-half percent food and beverage fee and an economic development levy, for $260,000 annually.
State aid has declined from $9.7 million in 2002 to a possible 2010 allocation of $6.3 million. As a result, a plan for general fund spending in 2011 puts the budget back to 2005 levels.
Overall, the city emerged from the decade stronger than when it entered, Hentges said.
The city is about to start another strategic plan for the next five to 10 years, including a council retreat later this year. It will be difficult to look forward, Hentges acknowledged, if the city has to focus its attention on re-working its budget.
