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The Planetizen News Brief - 12/4/08

4 December 2008 - 5:00am
Smart City Radio

The Planetizen News Brief is a weekly rundown of some of the most interesting and important news and issues of the past week.

The Planetizen News Brief airs every week on the nationally-syndicated radio program "Smart City", which is broadcast in cities across the U.S. Learn more about Smart City and listen to archived shows.

Full Transcript

It is a confusing time for cities -- and for the people who work for them. On one hand, the recent election showed a groundswell of support for new investment in infrastructure and a renewed interest in the future of America’s urban places. But at the same time, cities are facing mounting fiscal problems as the double wave of the mortgage crisis and the economic recession hits the shore. While greater investment appears to sit just over the horizon, right now many cities are being forced to make tough decisions about where to cut services. Officials are understandably worried about what it will mean to have less money to keep their cities moving. But cutting back doesn’t necessarily have to mean dark days ahead for cities.

One way to think about it is streamlining. In a recent column on Citiwire, Neal Peirce writes that the best place to cut back funding is in those areas that use the most money. Sounds good, but for most cities, those areas are public safety services like police and firefighters – not the most politically popular places to be taking away money. But don’t be so fast to put the kibosh on those cuts, Peirce argues. By improving the efficiency of these safety operations, he says cities can cut budgets and still maintain high levels of service.

And though it might seem like public safety is playing the scapegoat here, there’s evidence to back the claim up. When the city of Vallejo, California declared bankruptcy this spring, it was largely due to ballooning salaries and benefits for public safety employees like cops and firefighters. Nearly 75 percent of the city’s general fund went towards these services, and the rising costs of providing pensions for retirees rapidly became too much for the city to handle. According to a recent article in Governing Magazine, bankruptcy was the unfortunate solution for Vallejo, but many other cities in similar situations are looking towards the city for guidance – mainly on what not to do. But Vallejo’s tough lesson about the need to deal with public employee pay and benefits may turn out to be a good thing overall. Now that cities have seen what can happen if the problem gets out of hand, they can act sooner to prevent it from happening. The true lesson is that cities will need to rethink their funding structures now if they’re going to be able to survive through these tough economic times.

Stories discussed in this week's Planetizen News Brief

Cutting Back May Simply Mean Streamlining

The Cautionary Tale of Vallejo

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