I'd like to know the details, engineering and costs, of these proposed projects because I don't think such projects are within financial standards of "need." I don't think the City Council is capable of assessing these projects properly, as to cost/benefit. So often, projects get proposed, voted and built only to find that they do not pay for themselves, are substandard, or valued only be certain groups within political boundaries. Costs should include financing of future problems deemed within the scope of the project:
Life-cycle costs: This refers to the total cost of ownership over the entire life of an asset or project, including initial investment, operating costs, maintenance, and eventual disposal.
Post-implementation costs: These are specifically the costs incurred after a project is implemented or completed.
Maintenance costs: Ongoing expenses required to keep an asset or project in good working condition.
Future cash outflows: In financial modeling, this term is used to describe any expected future expenses related to a project.
Total cost of ownership (TCO): Similar to life-cycle costs, this includes all direct and indirect costs associated with an asset or project over its entire lifespan.
I think that the very first question the City Council should be asking is, "Does the City of Lafayette NEED a gold course, a water park, a fitness center, or a skate park?" Those are all nice amenities -- for SOME people. These are perfect examples of distributed costs and concentrated benefits. That is an extremely common practice for government. Tax everyone a little for the benefit of a far smaller group. What percent of Lafayette residents golf? What percent use the pool complex (NOTE: For those who know that I am a Navy guy and want to know how I can protest a facility for swimming, I want it know that if I were meant to swim, it would be fun (and yes, I can swim). The purpose of the Navy is to make the other guy go swimming.). What percent use the skate park? What percent use the Rec Center (and yes, I use it). The City of Lafayette, owes its residents thing like the Fire Department, the Police, good, safe streets, good, safe sidewalks before it owes the residents amenities.
When faced with these kinds of questions, governments simply propose "extending" some tax or fee that was originally passed for X. They are taking advantage of the fact that people wonʻt see an increase in taxation rather than noting that people wonʻt see a decrease either, and with the recent spike in inflation, people could actually use a couple extra bucks a week.
Karen, the size and the scope of these projects suggest we have some very compelling options. One is shared services across several municipalities. One could ask does it make sense for Lafayette, Louisville, Erie and maybe Superior to have their own duplicated maintenance yard, data center, and cybersecurity teams? The cost and ecosytem impact of these projects could prove daunting to say the least.
Interesting. I would suggest that it would be difficult to share maintenance yards with another municipality. Snow removal for instance would need to be done by them all at the same time as would ongoing park work. We already have our own yard as do all the other cities around us. What is being proposed is to enlarge the building we already have. Driving to other cities to have maintenance done on our vehicles or to pick them up each morning and return them at night doesn't seem to be a good use of time.
I'm not sure we would want to share data and cybersecurity with other cities as there is sensitive info that I personally would not want to see other entities gain access to.
There is a difference between where vehicles (snow removal for instance) should be stored and where they need to be maintained. We could share a maintenance facility rather than each municipality having its own. An actual maintenance facility (and manning) is far more expensive than a weather shelter for the vehicles. I realize that there is an unrecognized bias that says, "This isnʻt my money, so I donʻt need to be so frugal in spending it." Not an original thought with me. The Nobel Laureate, Milton Friedman said, "There are different ways people spend money:
- People spend their own money for themselves looking at cost and quality
- People spend their own money for someone else looking at cost
- People spend other peopleʻs money for yet other people looking far less at either cost of quality (quality considers also needs).
The city really needs to ask itself (that would be the City Council) whether or not the Fire Department, for example, really needs a gym when the rec center is, literally, just across the street. I know that it would be more convenient, but is it a NEED?
Perhaps seeing what we have now gives me a different perspective on the topic of the service center. It's one long building with sections for mechanics to work and sections for some of the vehicles to be stored. It's not being suggested that it be rebuilt, but to add to the length of the building.
Karen, Thanks for the note. I just think that the City Council, when considering any project or ordinance should consider cost/benefit (and weigh cost very heavily). I have to smile when we talk about City Hall as being old. I worked in a hangar in Maine - a hangar that was built in 1940 and it was single wall wooden construction so the wall of my office was the back of the board that was the outside wall of the hangar. I am not wildly sympathetic to the need to replace a 40 year old building. BTW, when I worked in the Pentagon, my office was un-renovated from the original 1941 construction and I worked there in ʻ94-ʻ96.
I think the issue with city hall is more that we have added a lot of new positions and employees and there isn't enough office space to accommodate them now.
Well, that goes back to my discussion of Parkinsonʻs Law where the bureaucracy just grows and grows because government can always tax more. The city really needs to consider what it NEEDS to provide vs what it can provide.
Karen, there are wonderful examples where highly capitalized and rare skills (highly compensated) are shared, and farming co-ops are but one example.
Coinsider the following. Our city was hacked and data compromised in a very simple ransom attack. The ability of small cities to maintain a robust architecture gets more challenging everyday. No where is this being felt more than in university settings, municipal and public utility settings.
There is a reason why no telco or cell phone company owns its cell towers. Two companies American Tower and Crown Castle own and operate roughly 100,000 towers... or 80% of the market. By 2013 ATT sold its towers to Crown and by 2015 Verizon sold all its towers to American tower.
Thank you for keeping us informed. Regarding the fire and police station improvements, didn’t voters approve funding for the current location a couple of years ago? Does that funding continue through sales tax collections?
Thanks for the opportunity to provide info on your questions! I am going to check into how we paid for the current police and fire stations.
In 2021 the voters approved a Public Safety Tax that increased the sales and use tax by 0.27%, or 2.7 cents on a $10 purchase. This was to fund public safety services. It is a permanent tax.
We also have a permanent property tax passed by the voters in 2014 to maintain police and fire services including investment in crime prevention and youth services.
The city told us the following in 2021:
Why a Public Safety Ballot Measure is Being Put Before Voters
There is a critical need for additional resources to increase the level of public safety services in the City of Lafayette, and to ensure our personnel have adequate equipment and resources to safely and sufficiently respond to emergencies.
Lafayette’s public safety agencies aren’t staffed at levels to fully protect our City. Due to population growth in Lafayette, particularly in the multi-family and senior housing categories, some community public safety coverage is running below necessary levels. Lafayette, like much of the Front Range, has seen significant growth. Our population has grown from 24,500 to more than 32,400 -- a 32% increase – from 2010 to 2020. The staffing for our police and fire departments has not kept pace.
Emergency management and disaster recovery are vital functions of the Lafayette Fire and Police Departments. Ensuring these departments are appropriately equipped with operational and administrative resources to manage current and future emergencies and prepared for environmental and climate events requires additional funding.
Fire Department Needs
The Fire Department needs to replace aging and outdated fire ladder trucks, fire engines, ambulances, and critical firefighter breathing equipment. They need to hire additional firefighters and medics to reduce response times and provide an acceptable level of fire and medical emergency services to the City’s communities and neighborhoods.
Lafayette’s two fire stations cover every corner of the City for fire and medical response. Additional fire personnel at Station 2, located by Good Samaritan Medical Center, will improve response capabilities in the southern areas of Lafayette and reduce overall fire and emergency response times for the entire City.
Aging firefighting equipment not only leaves our community more vulnerable but also puts our first responders at risk. Some equipment helps firefighters to breathe more safely when the air is filled with smoke or chemicals. Other equipment, like ambulances and ladder trucks, get pushed to their limits and need to be replaced. The wear and tear on these vehicles gives them a fixed lifespan. Staying on top of funding for equipment needs is vital for helping first responders to respond to emergencies quickly and help those in danger while limiting their own risks.
Police Department Needs
The Police Department needs to hire mental health co-responders to accompany police on calls involving behavioral health Issues to minimize violence, arrests, and the use of jails. They also need to hire additional police officers to increase the number of officers on duty at all times, reduce response time, and put more focus on community policing. Finally, the Police Department needs funding for police-worn body camera maintenance and the costs associated with video storage.
A 2019 survey of 21 cities along the Denver-Boulder corridor found that Lafayette had the lowest police-to-population ratio. For every 1,000 residents, the Lafayette Police Department has fewer than two staff. Some shifts providing service to Lafayette residents are minimally staffed with only two officers at any given time.
I'd like to know the details, engineering and costs, of these proposed projects because I don't think such projects are within financial standards of "need." I don't think the City Council is capable of assessing these projects properly, as to cost/benefit. So often, projects get proposed, voted and built only to find that they do not pay for themselves, are substandard, or valued only be certain groups within political boundaries. Costs should include financing of future problems deemed within the scope of the project:
Life-cycle costs: This refers to the total cost of ownership over the entire life of an asset or project, including initial investment, operating costs, maintenance, and eventual disposal.
Post-implementation costs: These are specifically the costs incurred after a project is implemented or completed.
Maintenance costs: Ongoing expenses required to keep an asset or project in good working condition.
Future cash outflows: In financial modeling, this term is used to describe any expected future expenses related to a project.
Total cost of ownership (TCO): Similar to life-cycle costs, this includes all direct and indirect costs associated with an asset or project over its entire lifespan.
Interesting. Thanks for this assessment. I will be reporting on progress if any move along and we can see what info is presented to the council.
Karen you are really to be congratulated on how well you get the word out! Thank you again and yet again
Thanks Ralph!
I think that the very first question the City Council should be asking is, "Does the City of Lafayette NEED a gold course, a water park, a fitness center, or a skate park?" Those are all nice amenities -- for SOME people. These are perfect examples of distributed costs and concentrated benefits. That is an extremely common practice for government. Tax everyone a little for the benefit of a far smaller group. What percent of Lafayette residents golf? What percent use the pool complex (NOTE: For those who know that I am a Navy guy and want to know how I can protest a facility for swimming, I want it know that if I were meant to swim, it would be fun (and yes, I can swim). The purpose of the Navy is to make the other guy go swimming.). What percent use the skate park? What percent use the Rec Center (and yes, I use it). The City of Lafayette, owes its residents thing like the Fire Department, the Police, good, safe streets, good, safe sidewalks before it owes the residents amenities.
When faced with these kinds of questions, governments simply propose "extending" some tax or fee that was originally passed for X. They are taking advantage of the fact that people wonʻt see an increase in taxation rather than noting that people wonʻt see a decrease either, and with the recent spike in inflation, people could actually use a couple extra bucks a week.
Karen, the size and the scope of these projects suggest we have some very compelling options. One is shared services across several municipalities. One could ask does it make sense for Lafayette, Louisville, Erie and maybe Superior to have their own duplicated maintenance yard, data center, and cybersecurity teams? The cost and ecosytem impact of these projects could prove daunting to say the least.
Interesting. I would suggest that it would be difficult to share maintenance yards with another municipality. Snow removal for instance would need to be done by them all at the same time as would ongoing park work. We already have our own yard as do all the other cities around us. What is being proposed is to enlarge the building we already have. Driving to other cities to have maintenance done on our vehicles or to pick them up each morning and return them at night doesn't seem to be a good use of time.
I'm not sure we would want to share data and cybersecurity with other cities as there is sensitive info that I personally would not want to see other entities gain access to.
There is a difference between where vehicles (snow removal for instance) should be stored and where they need to be maintained. We could share a maintenance facility rather than each municipality having its own. An actual maintenance facility (and manning) is far more expensive than a weather shelter for the vehicles. I realize that there is an unrecognized bias that says, "This isnʻt my money, so I donʻt need to be so frugal in spending it." Not an original thought with me. The Nobel Laureate, Milton Friedman said, "There are different ways people spend money:
- People spend their own money for themselves looking at cost and quality
- People spend their own money for someone else looking at cost
- People spend other peopleʻs money for yet other people looking far less at either cost of quality (quality considers also needs).
The city really needs to ask itself (that would be the City Council) whether or not the Fire Department, for example, really needs a gym when the rec center is, literally, just across the street. I know that it would be more convenient, but is it a NEED?
Perhaps seeing what we have now gives me a different perspective on the topic of the service center. It's one long building with sections for mechanics to work and sections for some of the vehicles to be stored. It's not being suggested that it be rebuilt, but to add to the length of the building.
Karen, Thanks for the note. I just think that the City Council, when considering any project or ordinance should consider cost/benefit (and weigh cost very heavily). I have to smile when we talk about City Hall as being old. I worked in a hangar in Maine - a hangar that was built in 1940 and it was single wall wooden construction so the wall of my office was the back of the board that was the outside wall of the hangar. I am not wildly sympathetic to the need to replace a 40 year old building. BTW, when I worked in the Pentagon, my office was un-renovated from the original 1941 construction and I worked there in ʻ94-ʻ96.
I think the issue with city hall is more that we have added a lot of new positions and employees and there isn't enough office space to accommodate them now.
Well, that goes back to my discussion of Parkinsonʻs Law where the bureaucracy just grows and grows because government can always tax more. The city really needs to consider what it NEEDS to provide vs what it can provide.
Guy this is a very good point you make
Karen, there are wonderful examples where highly capitalized and rare skills (highly compensated) are shared, and farming co-ops are but one example.
Coinsider the following. Our city was hacked and data compromised in a very simple ransom attack. The ability of small cities to maintain a robust architecture gets more challenging everyday. No where is this being felt more than in university settings, municipal and public utility settings.
There is a reason why no telco or cell phone company owns its cell towers. Two companies American Tower and Crown Castle own and operate roughly 100,000 towers... or 80% of the market. By 2013 ATT sold its towers to Crown and by 2015 Verizon sold all its towers to American tower.
Thank you for keeping us informed. Regarding the fire and police station improvements, didn’t voters approve funding for the current location a couple of years ago? Does that funding continue through sales tax collections?
Thanks for the opportunity to provide info on your questions! I am going to check into how we paid for the current police and fire stations.
In 2021 the voters approved a Public Safety Tax that increased the sales and use tax by 0.27%, or 2.7 cents on a $10 purchase. This was to fund public safety services. It is a permanent tax.
We also have a permanent property tax passed by the voters in 2014 to maintain police and fire services including investment in crime prevention and youth services.
The city told us the following in 2021:
Why a Public Safety Ballot Measure is Being Put Before Voters
There is a critical need for additional resources to increase the level of public safety services in the City of Lafayette, and to ensure our personnel have adequate equipment and resources to safely and sufficiently respond to emergencies.
Lafayette’s public safety agencies aren’t staffed at levels to fully protect our City. Due to population growth in Lafayette, particularly in the multi-family and senior housing categories, some community public safety coverage is running below necessary levels. Lafayette, like much of the Front Range, has seen significant growth. Our population has grown from 24,500 to more than 32,400 -- a 32% increase – from 2010 to 2020. The staffing for our police and fire departments has not kept pace.
Emergency management and disaster recovery are vital functions of the Lafayette Fire and Police Departments. Ensuring these departments are appropriately equipped with operational and administrative resources to manage current and future emergencies and prepared for environmental and climate events requires additional funding.
Fire Department Needs
The Fire Department needs to replace aging and outdated fire ladder trucks, fire engines, ambulances, and critical firefighter breathing equipment. They need to hire additional firefighters and medics to reduce response times and provide an acceptable level of fire and medical emergency services to the City’s communities and neighborhoods.
Lafayette’s two fire stations cover every corner of the City for fire and medical response. Additional fire personnel at Station 2, located by Good Samaritan Medical Center, will improve response capabilities in the southern areas of Lafayette and reduce overall fire and emergency response times for the entire City.
Aging firefighting equipment not only leaves our community more vulnerable but also puts our first responders at risk. Some equipment helps firefighters to breathe more safely when the air is filled with smoke or chemicals. Other equipment, like ambulances and ladder trucks, get pushed to their limits and need to be replaced. The wear and tear on these vehicles gives them a fixed lifespan. Staying on top of funding for equipment needs is vital for helping first responders to respond to emergencies quickly and help those in danger while limiting their own risks.
Police Department Needs
The Police Department needs to hire mental health co-responders to accompany police on calls involving behavioral health Issues to minimize violence, arrests, and the use of jails. They also need to hire additional police officers to increase the number of officers on duty at all times, reduce response time, and put more focus on community policing. Finally, the Police Department needs funding for police-worn body camera maintenance and the costs associated with video storage.
A 2019 survey of 21 cities along the Denver-Boulder corridor found that Lafayette had the lowest police-to-population ratio. For every 1,000 residents, the Lafayette Police Department has fewer than two staff. Some shifts providing service to Lafayette residents are minimally staffed with only two officers at any given time.
Karen and our population is aging and older folks require more public assistance