The Red Ant - The Red Ant

I hate missing my town league team’s hockey games, but it looks like I might have to miss one on Tuesday in order to attend the City’s work session to be held at 5:00 pm at City Hall on February 10. At that meeting the City will consider whether to close the Aspen Ice Garden for 5 and a half months out of the year. The agenda packet for that meeting can be found at this link: http://aspenpitkin.com/uploads/cc.ws.021009.pdf.

Lots of people from the community are going to attend that meeting and are going to tell the Mayor and the City Council how much they love the Ice Garden. So there’s not much I can add to that discussion.

But I feel compelled to attend because the City’s numbers that are being used to justify the closure don’t add up, and I think we’re going to have to have a little discussion... with the City about the impact their proposed plan will have on the City’s bottom line.

I've gone through the Agenda packet prepared by City Manager Steve Barwick for Tuesday's work session, and unless you are a masochist I can’t encourage you to do likewise. In that packet there is a memo from Tim Anderson stating that the summer closure of the Ice Garden would result in a budget reduction of $164,791. That number seems to be the driving force behind the proposal to close the Ice Garden.

But when one works through the data in the packet and crunches the numbers a bit one realizes that the “savings” are probably illusory. In particular, one must conclude that the City’s operating deficit for the Ice Garden becomes WORSE if the Ice Garden were to be closed under the City's plan.

I’m about to discuss a bunch o’ numbers. For those of you not mathematically inclined let me put it in a nutshell for you: the City’s plan will probably cost the City more money than if the City had done nothing.

Please refer to the table below. The 2008 numbers are taken from the 2008 City Budget. The 2009 (full year) numbers are taken from “Attachment E” to Tim Anderson’s memo dated January 21, 2009, that is included in the packet. That Attachment states the City had budgeted the Ice Garden's full year 2009 expenditures to be $608,720 (a 9.7% increase from 2008), and the Ice Garden's full year 2009 revenues to be $374,300 (a 6.6% increase from 2008). No explanations were provided as to why either expenditures or revenues would increase in 2009 over 2008, but for purposes of this discussion let's take those numbers as they are.

As for the 2009 partial year numbers, Page 3 of the agenda packet cover memo is a spreadsheet that has a column entitled "Management Proposal" for 2009 showing that the Ice Garden's expenditures would be reduced to $434,200 if the City’s closure plan were to be adopted. That figure does represent a decrease of $174,520 from the $608,720 number that would have been expended in 2009 had the Ice Garden stayed open the entire year.

But the $434,200 figure means that under the closure plan it would cost the City $66,800 per month (ie $434,200 divided by 6.5 months when the Ice Garden would be open), or $2,226.67 per day, to operate the Ice Garden. This compares with projected 2009 monthly operating cost of $50,727 (i.e. $608,720 divided by 12) if the Ice Garden were to be open for the full year. In other words, the monthly operating cost would increase by 31.7% if the City only operated the Ice Garden for part of the year instead of the full year. By contrast, in 2008 it cost the City $46,247.50 a month to operate the Ice Garden, so under the City's proposed partial closure plan the monthly operating expense would increase 44% from the 2008 level.

To put the matter another way, if the Ice Garden were only to be open about half the year you might expect the City to spend about half of what they were planning to spend. Instead the City plans on spending 71% of what they would have spent (i.e, $434,200 divided by $608,720).

Turning now to the revenue side of the equation, the page 3 spreadsheet does not contain a partial year revenue figure for the Ice Garden. But if one takes the City's 2009 projected Ice Garden full year revenue figure of $374,300, and multiplies it by .532 to prorate that annual revenue figure over the partial year that the Ice Garden would be open under the City’s closure plan (i.e., 194 days out of a 365 day year, hence the .532 ratio), one gets projected partial year revenues of $199,128.

Now let’s net out the figures. If one takes the annual partial year expenditure of $434,200 and subtracts the partial year revenues of $199,128, one comes out with an annual deficit under the partial year plan of $235,072. So this means the City's operating deficit would INCREASE under the City's closure plan, from $234,420 if it were operated full year 2009 to $235,072 if it were operated part of the year in 2009.

2008 2009 (full yr) 2009(partial yr)

Annual Expense $554,970 $608,720 $434.200

Annual Revenue 351,093 374,300 199,128

Deficit $203,877 $234,420 $235,072

These figures do not correlate with the spreadsheet that is “Attachment A” to Tim Anderson’s memo, in which Tim comes up with proposed cuts of $164,791. It must be noted that Attachment A only lists “proposed cuts”. It does not discuss the expenditures that will have to be made in order to restart the Ice Garden in the fall, and it does not discuss the growth in the operating deficit described above. To be fair to Tim we are measuring different things. He is measuring “proposed cuts”, while I am measuring the bottom line.

I don’t argue that the City needs to reduce its budget. But I do feel that this proposed plan is not the way to do it.

The meeting starts at 5:00, and my game starts at 9:00. If you skate, play hockey, love this community, or are offended by bad government plans I urge you to attend this meeting. Unfortunately this figures to be a long meeting so I’m not sure I’m going to make my game.

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The author, Millard Zimet, believes in fighting bad numbers.

Update on February 11 by

Elizabeth

Thanks to the impact of a standing room only crowd of hockey and skating enthusiasts, City Council got the message that recreation for locals is a greater priority than some of the City’s expensive, bureaucratic, central planning programs. The best news, in my opinion, is that a private, creative, entrepreneurially minded group may be running the Ice Garden. I predict a demonstration of how private/public efforts can bring more efficiency and customer focused services than government can do alone.

With private management, I predict that we will see more hockey tournaments, bringing more visitors to town. Maybe some skating competitions. I expect some positive spillover impact on the local economy.

Who knows,-- perhaps one day, we could even allow private sector developers to develop affordable housing in Aspen, and make it actually affordable.

Let’s hope that the City got the message that recreation for local families is more important to the citizens than:

$638,000 in City employee bonuses paid in December

$500,000+ in planned City employee bonuses for 2009!

$68,000 in planned 2009 employee recognition programs.

$100,000+ for the Historic Preservation Task force ongoing study of 1970’s houses and whether they should be preserved. (2008)

$140,000 (2008) in City provided meals during meetings.

$120,000 in designing the Main Street median concept (which got the go ahead by Council as recently as Jan.20., when they expected to spend $3 million+ for the entire project.)

$3.8 million for 2009 Burlingame II planning and design. (when actual constructionis now years away.)

And that is just the beginning of the fat in the budget which the City management and most of Council feel that we should “wait 2 more months TO SEE how the economy might go” before making serious cuts.

Now, if only the taxpayers in general were as organized and passionate as those hockey players……