2.11.20

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TUESDAY

02.11.2020 Vol. 220 No. 094

$263,300,236 AMBER MOHMAND/ IOWA STATE DAILY Ames City Council conducting business on Jan. 14. The City Council will host a public input meeting about the 2020 to 2021 budget.

City Council to host public input meeting over budget BY AMBER.MOHMAND @iowastatedaily.com Th e Ames City Council will host a public input meeting to discuss the 2020-21 budget and Capital Improvements Plan. The Council will vote on amendments to the 20202025 Capital Improvements Plan. They will also vote on a motion to approve the plan. The Council will also be voting on a motion to host a public hearing Feb. 25 to adopt a maximum city property tax levy for the 2020 to 2021 fiscal year. The Council will vote to set March 10 as the final public hearing for the 2020-21 budget. The proposed budget, subject to change in the future, has estimated expenditures of $263,300,236 in order to fund the wide variety of services. The variety of services can be broken down to 32.3 percent on utilities, 25.1 percent on Capital Improvements Plan, 9 percent on public safety, 8.2 percent on transportation, 8.4 percent on internal services, 7.6 percent on debt service, 6.6 percent on community enrichment and 2.9 percent on general

COUNCIL

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A breakdown of the Ames City Council budget BY AMBER.MOHMAND @iowastatedaily.com The Ames City Council and the departments within the city of Ames hosted a three-day meeting breaking down the budget for the 2020 to 2021 fiscal year. Ames City Manager Steve Schainker has recommended the budget based on the research and discussion with the staff working for the city of Ames. “So it’s my responsibility to develop the budget with input from all my department heads and bring it forward to the City Council; they review it, they might want to add to it, take away from it, make sure I’ve covered all the priorities they have, so they’re in a reviewing body now and would have the ability to modify it,” Schainker said. The proposed budget, subject to change in the future, has estimated expenditures totaled at $263,300,236 in order to fund the wide variety of services broken down as: 32.3 percent on utilities, 25.1 percent on capital improvements plan, 9 percent on public safety, 8.2 percent on transportation, 8.4 percent

on internal ser vices, 7.6 percent on debt service, 6.6 percent on community enrichment and 2.9 percent on general government. “So when I give a budget and we say it’s a $263 million budget and people try to compare [it to] the last year, let’s say [it] went up, it’s hard to compare because including that budget or number [are] diff erent businesses we operate,” Schainker said. “So you got to make sure you’re comparing apples to apples when you try to say, ‘Try to show a comparison of where we were last year from this year.’ So you have to break it down into smaller pieces to really understand what it will [be] we’re off ering in the way of services.” The council will hear public input on the proposed budget at their Tuesday meeting and will move to finalize the budget on March 10. The proposed property tax is increased from $10.02 to $10.14, a $0.12 or 1.4 percent increase from the 2019 to 2020 fiscal year, meaning an Ames resident will have to pay $10.14 per $1,000 of the taxable valuation if the city manager’s recommendation were to be approved.

“Property taxes pay for kind of the general services, like parks and recreation, the library, police, fire — those kinds of things,” Schainker said. “Utility fees obviously go for your electric bill, your water bill, your sewer bill, there’s a storm water utility as a resource recovery [and] ‘How do we dispose of garbage?’ So those kinds of fees are important too.” Th is is the lowest rate of increase in taxable valuation since the 2008 fi scal year, according to the drafted budget, which was caused by a global fi nancial crisis. Typically, over the past five years, there has been a 5.6 percent average increase. The causes could include a reduced rollback rate that is mandated by the state, reducing the taxable value of the residential and multi-residential property by $73,520,427, according to the drafted budget. The total taxable valuation for the 2020 to 2021 proper t y tax le vy is $3,112,286,020, a 1.1 percent change from the 2019 to 2020 fiscal year. “ We make up about a third of the property tax bill, and the biggest portion

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Sanders and Buttigieg campaigns request partial caucus recanvass BY JAKE.WEBSTER @iowastatedaily.com Iowa’s Democratic caucuses on Feb. 3 ended with unprecedented delays in the Iowa Democratic Party’s (IDP) release of results and no official winner, and the race may not be called for days to come with a recanvassing of results pending. The presidential campaigns of Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders are in a virtual tie in the state delegate equivalents (SDE) awarded from caucuses, which are used to determine a victor. A New York Times analysis found potentially hundreds of precincts across Iowa have inconsistencies in how their results were reported, which could affect which of the two candidates come out on top. The potentially flawed results the

IDP released have led the Associated Press to decline to call a winner in the race, despite Buttigieg’s razor-thin edge over Sanders in SDEs. “[Monday], the Sanders campaign filed requests for recanvass for 28 precincts, and the Buttigieg campaign filed requests for recanvass for 66 precincts and all in-state satellite precincts — a total of 143 precincts, removing duplicities,” according to a release from the IDP on Monday. A recanvass would involve checking the math used to tabulate results from the affected precincts. The IDP’s recount and recanvass committee will review the requests to determine whether they meet its “required standard” and transmit to the campaigns its assessment of the requests to each respective campaign within 48

hours, according to the release. “In the event of a recanvass, the IDP will analyze the requested precincts to correct any inconsistencies between the reported results and their official record of result from caucus night, as signed by the precinct chair, secretary and representatives of campaigns,” according to the release. In a press conference Monday, the IDP Chair Troy Price said any mathematical errors in precinct data, such as those flagged by the Times, cannot be adjusted by the state party. “These sheets are signed not only by the precinct chair and the precinct secretary, they are also signed by campaign representatives; and so for us, they are the official record of what took place in the room, and we do not believe that we should be altering what

is the official record of what happened in the room,” Price said. “The course for correcting that is what is starting here today, starting with the recanvass process and then if we requested a recount after that, and so that’s where we are in the process.” The IDP chair said they will be able to figure out exactly how long that would take and what steps would follow the completion of a recanvass. “At this point, I can’t tell you exactly how long this will take, but we should have more information in the next couple of days,” Price said. In a letter to Price, Sanders requested a “limited precinct-level” review and recanvass of results. “Mathematical errors and inconsistencies in the tabulations for 25 precincts and three satellite caucuses led

to at least 2.2312 too many [SDEs] to be assigned to Mayor Pete Buttigieg and at least 2.3942 too few to my campaign,” Sanders said in the letter. Should Sanders’ claim be reflected in new results following a recanvassing, he would take the lead over Buttigieg in the SDE count. Buttigieg maintains a lead of less than 3 SDEs over Sanders, according to the data the IDP released as of Monday. The IDP did not release results from any precinct caucus sites the night of the caucuses, instead delaying the results until the following afternoon and releasing partial results throughout the following days until the party had released 100 percent of results late Thursday. Price apologized for the delays and errors in some of the results the party released in a press conference Friday.


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2.11.20 by Iowa State Daily - Issuu