Guest Opinion: Palo Alto is AAA -- beware of apples and oranges... Guest Opinion: Palo Alto is AAA -- beware of apples and oranges... (March 05, 2003)

by Bern Beecham, Jim Burch and Dena Mossar

There is always room for making things more efficient, and criticism is extremely helpful in identifying areas needing improvement.

But allegations that Palo Alto is badly managed and bloated -- no matter how frequently and forcefully repeated -- are off base and out of line.

We're not experts on cabbages, but we do know the difference between apples and oranges when it comes to making fair and accurate comparisons.

The city overall is extremely well managed financially. We have a AAA bond rating, the highest possible -- no city in the country has a higher rating.

We are virtually debt-free. We do all our capital repair and renovation on a pay-as-you-go basis, and are now doing some catch-up on infrastructure areas that were slighted a bit in past years.

It's true that Palo Alto spends about $1,400 per resident for General Fund services, excluding the cost of operating city-owned utilities and excluding income from utility reimbursements for services and user fees from programs and services. But it's not true that Palo Alto has failed to do comparative analyses with other cities in terms of budget expenditures and salaries.

It is true that we have been able to support more services for residents because of the revenue the city receives from its city-owned electrical, gas, water and sewer utilities. Last year alone, our utilities contributed about $12 million to the city's General Fund while at the same time generally keeping electrical and gas costs well below that of neighboring communities served by private utilities.

When someone takes a close, non-simplistic look at that $1,400-per-resident figure, one finds two items of special interest:

1) Funds to support programs of the Palo Alto Unified School District account for $105 per resident per year. These funds stem both from the 1988 voter-approved program to lease school sites (in lieu of their being sold off) and from city agreements to maintain school play fields and provide school-crossing guards. These arrangements have materially aided the district as it has struggled financially to preserve its pre-eminence in education. Beyond the obvious value to the lives of our children, our school system for decades has been cited as a major reason our homes have such high value.

2) Another $193 is for maintaining and rehabilitating the city's infrastructure -- streets, sidewalks, buildings, parks, open space and other features that most of us take for granted. Many cities, for instance, bill adjacent residents for the cost of sidewalk repairs. Palo Alto, the city that loves trees but isn't too crazy about tree roots under sidewalks, absorbs such repairs directly.

When those two items alone are subtracted, that leaves about $1,100 per resident per year -- oddly enough the "average" cited by critics for other cities.

Now let's look at the biggest chunks of that $1,100. The largest single item is police services, at $258 per resident per year. It's hard to compare that straight across with other cities, as that figure includes Palo Alto's sophisticated 9-1-1 emergency-dispatch system (which other cities often contract for) and a full animal-control and animal-shelter operation, both providing superior levels of service.

Perhaps it's only a coincidence that Palo Alto's "Part 1" crime rate -- for homicide, rape, robbery, arson, auto theft and grand larceny -- is one of the lowest for cities of comparable size, and violent crimes are consistently lower than in nearby communities.

Fire protection costs $158 per resident per year, and includes a paramedic service of highly trained, life-saving specialists.

Youth and children's activities -- including recreation/sports programs, the Children's Theater, Art Center youth programs and the Junior Museum and Zoo, among others -- account for $135 per resident per year. Parks and open space cost $112 and library services cost $80.

Which of these programs would you like to see slashed? It is our experience that suggesting cuts in any such programs is likely to fill the council chambers with dedicated advocates.

Our civil debate today ought not to be about cabbages and cows, or even apples and oranges. It should be about efficiency, economic hard times and preserving our libraries, services for our kids and seniors and in between, our facilities, our public safety and both the quality of life in our community and the underlying value of our homes and properties.

Dena Mossar is 2003 mayor of Palo Alto, Bern Beecham is vice mayor and Jim Burch is a member of the City Council. They can be e-mailed at bern@beecham.org, jimburch@earthlink.net, and dmossar@yahoo.com.