What's Left of Maplewood (MN)

We can't draw, so we are left with verbal cartoons about Maplewood city politics.

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Facts for Wikipedia

Our resident troll went to Wikipedia last night to slant its Maplewood content in favor of Longrie, Cave and Hjelle (click here to see the edits he or she made). Not surprisingly, an experienced user there went in today and cleaned up some of our troll's spelling and grammar, and also inserted notes looking for factual support for various claims.

I thought it might be fun to run down a couple of the mistakes our troll introduced, or add information to put it in context.

There are lots of subjective changes in language (such as removing the "controversial" adjective from the reorganization plan, or rearranging the names of the council members so that they are not listed by seniority, but instead alphabetically, so the troll's favorites are listed first). But let's go for the meat.

Our Troll Wrote: "Supporters [of the Gang of Three] point to higher than average management costs in Maplewood versus other cities which has driven double digit tax increases over the past five years."

Fact: The new council has approved a 10.2% levy increase for 2007. (Citation: Maplewood-Ramsey County Review article about the final levy approved.) In contrast, the last budget of the previous council had only a 5% levy increase (citation: 2006 Budget Overview, from the Maplewood city website). This new council majority is increasing taxes by double digits, while the previous budget did not.

Our Troll Wrote: "Detractors have also claimed that the other reorganizations were due to personal vendettas while supporters point to cost savings of $500,000."

Fact: If we're saving $500k on some job eliminations, we're more than making up for it with increases elsewhere, since the total taxes paid by the property owners of Maplewood are rising by about $1.4 million (citation: the Review article quotes Copeland saying the new levy will be about $15.5 million, and according to the 2007 budget, page 6, the 2006 levy was about $14.1 million).

Exactly where they are spending this extra money they're taking out of our pockets is a little hard to figure out, because of how they rearranged everything in the budget. If you look on page 11 of the 2007 budget, though, we have "Total By Classification," where you can see the biggest increase is 8.7% for "Contractual Services." We're spending another $692,540 there. It looks to me like all the much ballyhooed "savings" from eliminating these enemies of the Gang of Three are going straight into the hands of new independent contractors, such as Bethel & Associates, and then some.

Every time our troll or another Longrista talks about how much their staff cuts are saving the city, ask them back, so why are we going to pay 10.2% more in taxes? The fact is, their added hiring (new super-managers) and other spending increases will more than offset savings from the positions eliminated, plus they'll be doling out big new checks to their pals as "independent contractors" as well.

I don't know if we had higher than average management costs before (all we know is that half of our managers are paid better than average, and even that requires us to believe Copeland), but if we did, this council and manager have only rearranged them on paper.

Our Troll Wrote: "Supporters point out that it was Ms. Cave who ran for office and won by an overwhelming majority (approx 70%)."

Fact: Cave won less than 64% (documentation: Ramsey County website, Special Election results) in the special election on February 28th, which doesn't quite round to 70%. As impressive as this sounds, it's important to remember that turnout in this special election was very low (less than 12% of registered voters), and though she won, her vote total was actually lower than the number of votes she had gotten in the regular election the previous November, which she lost (documentation: Ramsey County website). Turnout was on the level where, say, a group of people in a church could swing it by pressuring their fellow congregants to get out and vote for a member of the parish.

Our Troll Wrote: "Supporters of Copeland pointed out than his failure to complete an advanced degree, limited work history, and legal problems were the result of a car accident many years ago (the other vehicle being at fault) leaving his wife seriously and permanently injured, requiring Copeland to serve as a full-time caregiver for his wife to the present day."

My Question Still Remains: How is it that now he is able work more-than-full-time as city manager, after so many years of being unable to work or go to school? Has he abandoned her? Did she get better, or pass away? Is the city health plan paying for the care that he used to have to do himself? (And if so, why couldn't he get a similar job before, if he's so well qualified?)

I am not really keen to drag the poor woman into this, but if she's the true reason for his decade of failing to accomplish anything, I have to wonder, what changed? And when? Was it just good timing that exactly when he no longer needed to care for his disabled wife, this Maplewood opportunity arose?

19 Comments:

  • At 12:25 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Frostbrand, if you want to prove your point that the statement "double digit tax increases over the past five years" is falty, you need to provide us readers with the percentage increases for the last five years, not the last year. That's meaningless.

    Now I know you are going to say "all I have to do is show one year where it isn't double digit and I have proved this person wrong."

    What if the past 5 years show that 4 of them had double digit increases? Then that makes it look like you are splitting hairs and damages your credibility. What if the past 5 year average of tax increases are double digit, then you lose more credibility.

    Bottom line is that printing stats from just last year is meaningless in light of what you could have published. You had an opportunity to prove a solid point and blew it. But thankfully there is still time for you to act.

    Your point that the $500,000 savings on employee salaries are being spent elsewhere is somewhat meaningless. The point is that they didn't get rid of $500,000 worth of management salaries and replace them with $500,000 worth of management salaries. What they did is cut $500,000 of management salaries and diverted them towards things like fixing all the broken stuff in our community center. Personally I like money spent at the center rather than on large management salaries.

    Your point on the budget being larger from last year to this year is a meaningless statistic for those of us who understand city management budgeting and the new GASB 34 accounting requirements.

    Maybe the dumb dumbs will go "oh wow" on the budget going up, but the educated people laugh about this for several reasons. For one, since the water and sewer bills are part of the budget, if you flush your toilet more often, the city budget goes up. If TIF districts created 20 years ago are closed, your budget goes down. Bottom line is that only 30% of the city budget even comes from property taxes. A lot of this money is what's called in and out money.

    I raise the GASB 34 issue because this now requires you to list assets and do depreciation on your balance statements differently than in the past. While I am no expert on this standard, I do recall people saying that this would change government budgeting.

    If you want to find out where additional money is going in a budget, looking through some executive summary which Frostbrand did is not the place to find answers. The executive summary is deliberately bland and broad because it is an executive summary.

    On this 8.7% for contractual services which you are making a big deal out of, the chart is combining all contractual services citywide into a total number of $8.6 million dollars. Yes it went up $692,540. All your comments say is that the city proposes spending $8.6 million dollars versus last years proposal of $7.9 million. That's it. This same page also shows the executive budget going down $370,480, and human resources going down $381,290 (Sherre Li's costs), and public works going down $1.8 million. You haven't provided much information to read into these numbers. You have to read the budget to do this.

    You ask the question why we are paying 10% more in taxes for next year. Well good question. Rather than make accusations, let's hear some concrete explanations as to where the money is going. All I remember hearing about is a substantial increase to deferred maintenance, with others placing the blame upon past management who let our buildings fall into disrepair.

    So Rebecca Cave won with 64% of the vote versus the claimed 70%. Well 64% sounds pretty convincing to me. Yes we can degrade Cave for running in a low turnout election, or can we? She isn't responsible for low turnout is she?

    What I don't get, is this claim that this special election was low turnout versus other city elections. I thought that all city elections in Maplewood have low turnout because past council members have been unwilling to run city elections at the same time as the state even year elections. The state average is something like 70%+, highest in the nation. What is the Maplewood off year average? 20%? What is the average in a Maplewood off year primary election? 10%? Again, a failed twist of numbers to somehow make Cave's election seem tainted.

    On the Copeland issue Frostbrand, you ask if he has abandonded his wife? In reply I will tell you that I grew up in a church environment where I was taught that the only comments you make on personal issues like this is to provide positive supporting comments. I have had close relatives of mine that were put into similar situations to what Copeland is in. I trust that Copeland is putting his family first, and nothing that I have seen would make me think otherwise. The attacks of his family values, which is what this essentially is, brings words to my tongue which would be inappropriate to say publicly.

     
  • At 12:49 AM, Blogger Frostbrand said…

    My point is that THIS council is giving us a double-digit increases.

    Thus, I find it puzzling that people up in arms about the double-digit increases of the past, such as you, (a) did NOT in fact get a double-digit increase in last year's budget, and (b) ARE most definitely getting one from this new council that they love.

    Before I make claims about the past five years, I'd like to actually dig up the data. I have not yet done so. I did find that information about last year, so I shared it.

    If you have done the research, please do share it with us. What were the tax levies of the past five years, and the year-over-year rate increases for each? I can believe that in some years it was double digit, simply given how property values have skyrocketed in the past half decade. I know my property taxes have increased so much in some of these years that we've gotten the special property tax rebate, but I also know that different properties rise in value and thus taxes at different rates, and there are other complexities.

    You provide a lot of explanations for why it's OK that we have a double-digit increase this year. Are we to believe that the increases in budgets in the past lacked any such reasons? Why are the excuses OK for this council but not their predecessors?

    Maybe the deferred maintenance was deferred because past councils did not want the taxes to go up even more -- which, I might add, is exactly what THIS council did when they decided to defer some of the maintenance themselves, and reduce the levy increase to 10.2% instead of the 11.4% in Copeland's draft budget.

    In any case, the original building maintenance plan is on page 4 of the budget document. The council decided to cut some of these items. Also, the $200,000 for the pool's air unit is supposed to be done with borrowing and so doesn't go straight to the bottom line of this year's budget. That means that $361,000ish is attributable to building maintenance in the draft budget, and clearly not all of this can be declared to be brand new budgetary needs (since every year some money is spent on maintenance, even if it hasn't been enough).

    $361,000 -- and that's before counting the cuts to maintenance made by the council to reduce the levy increase, and is not 100% an increase over 2006 spending on maintenance -- is a lot less than $1.4 million.

    So if you buy the Copeland/Longrie story about how it's all the fault of deferred maintenance, which they have been hawking for months, you're pretty gullible.

     
  • At 1:05 AM, Blogger Frostbrand said…

    > On the Copeland issue Frostbrand,
    > you ask if he has abandonded his
    > wife? In reply I will tell you
    > that I grew up in a church
    > environment where I was taught
    > that the only comments you make on
    > personal issues like this is to
    > provide positive supporting
    > comments.

    That's nice. We're not in a church environment.

    Also, I seem to recall you trying to post comments on personal issues like this about another former elected official, and getting upset that I didn't let them through.

    You and other Copeland apologists have told us that the emptiness of his resume is not because he's an unqualified loser, but because he has had a "full-time job" caring for his wife.

    It's a simple question to ask why in April of this year he suddenly found time to take on a second more-than-full-time job, running the city of Maplewood.

    What changed? Does his wife no longer need care? If he has made alternative arrangements for her care, why did he not do this a decade ago?

    I see two possibilities.

    (a) something changed in her condition (either medically, such as her getting better or passing away; or relationally, such as a divorce)

    (b) Copeland could have gone job hunting long ago, were he qualified for anything but an appointment by a the wife of his business partner, and he and the Longristas are shamelessly exploiting his wife's tragedy to cover this unpleasant truth.

    Since your response is to feign indignation and claim that the whole question is a total outrage, I'm going to assume it's (b) for now.

    What did your church teach you about exploiting the sick and the vulnerable to cover for your own inadequacy? Is that what the nuns taught you to do?

     
  • At 1:36 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Why don't you go knock on Copeland's door and ask his wife?

     
  • At 1:46 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Why this fixation with Copeland and his family situation?

    I agree with something that a previous poster said about judging the quality of a city manager by how well city services are delivered over the long term.

    I could care less about Copeland's personal lifestyle. This fixation on Copeland is similar to how the religious right gets fixated on gays.

     
  • At 9:37 AM, Blogger Frostbrand said…

    re: 1:46 AM -- our troll is learning how to use open proxy servers. :)

    I like the religious right comparison. It's a clever way to make it sound like you might be a different person.

     
  • At 9:47 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Anonymous:

    Being a churchgoer, then you should understand that Copeland and the Gruesome Threesome have gone against the Church by relatiating against those former employees by terminating them, oh I'm sorry, reorganizing them out of job.

    How does your Church feel about vengeance? How does your Church feel about personal vendettas harming families and children? My church would frown upon it and they definitely frown upon hypocracy.

    How come Copeland's settlement from his wife's lawsuit didn't cover future medical/caregiving expenses? Perhaps he had Bethel Law to settle it, and we all know how talented a firm they are. Any personal injury attorney would have demanded it if her injuries were as extensive as Copeland says.

    Frostbrand, you're right, I would like to know who is taking of his wife now that he's away from her so much of the time. Copeland brought it up so Anonymous, you shouldn't be whining when people ask legitmate questions about a subject that Copeland opened the door on.

     
  • At 11:30 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Maybe your mystery person decided to stop using his neighbors internet connection and is going to start using another neighbors connection instead.

     
  • At 11:53 AM, Blogger Frostbrand said…

    Naw, it looks to me like you're using open proxies. They're easy to identify.

    Maybe you have been using your neighbors' wi-fi connections. On the other hand, maybe this is another one of those Longriesque wild hypotheticals, like "maybe senior management was really planning to organize a bargaining unit all along -- we can never really be sure, can we?"

     
  • At 12:21 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Frostbrand does raise a good point about Copeland's wife. Any demands for privacy were lost when he touted it as the primary reason why he hasn't been working full time for the past 10-20 years.

     
  • At 12:22 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Sorry, forgot to sign the last post.

    -Jackson

     
  • At 3:08 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    While this is a little off the main subject, you can drive around our city and find dozens of unprotected wifi connections out there. This has been the subject of several tv news stories.

    On the main topic, I have gotten double digit tax increases every year. When you add in city, school, county, and those dozen or so special districts, then add in this fictious property valuation increases, then the shift of the formula from commercial to residential it adds up to 15% in some years.

    Maybe KSTP will want to an expose on Copeland's wife? How about Inside Edition?

     
  • At 3:24 PM, Blogger Frostbrand said…

    64.131.7.123 writes,

    > While this is a little off the main
    > subject, you can drive around our
    > city and find dozens of unprotected
    > wifi connections out there.

    This is true.

    And yet, you've posted at least 70 messages now from the same address. I guess it saves the wear on your car.

    ---

    About tax increases: Sure, they've been rocketing. Mine too. My point remains, this council isn't doing anything to stop it. They're doing it even more than last year.

    ---

    About Copeland's wife: I'm not interested in a story on TV. I'd just like for Longrie's sock puppets to have an answer to the simple question, "Why does Copeland not have to take care of her anymore?" Your team should come together and figure out a very simple answer to that question.

    You see, it's not really about Copeland's wife, it's about Copeland himself. Just calling us big meanies for asking it doesn't settle any doubts about Copeland's lackluster resume.

    All you're doing is saying "He has a good reason for doing nothing all these years!" and crying foul when we ask a perfectly reasonable question about what changed that lets him work now.

    It's like you told us he lost a decade to crack addiction so we should trust that he really has unrealized potential, and when we ask if he's off the crack now, you get incensed that we would pry into his private medical issues.

     
  • At 3:48 PM, Blogger Frostbrand said…

    Another followup to Diana's sock puppet, who wrote:

    > Bottom line is that only 30% of the
    > city budget even comes from property
    > taxes.

    In the interests of accuracy, I wanted to point out that p. 7 of the draft 2007 budget shows that 38.4% of revenues are from the tax levy.

    > Your point on the budget being
    > larger from last year to this year
    > is a meaningless statistic for
    > those of us who understand city
    > management budgeting and the new
    > GASB 34 accounting requirements.

    I suspect that GASB 34 is just another one of your Longriesque gambits to cloud the issue and show off that you know some vaguely related technical jargon with no substantive application to the issue at hand, but let's explore this a little. See:
    http://www.osa.state.mn.us/default.aspx?page=gasbimplementation

    "The fiscal year that ended December 31, 2004, will bring the completion of the third and final phase of the initial implementation of GASB 34"

    Also, "GASB 34 allowed governments another 4 years to implement the retroactive reporting of infrastructure capital assets."

    I don't know what GASB 34 is about, but it sounds like it mostly should have been done with two years ago.

    It also sounds like a non-cash adjustment for capital assets. If it appears anywhere, I suppose it would show up under "Capital Outlay and Depreciation" (see page 10 of the budget), which shows a somewhat surprising -8.0% change for 2007 vs. 2006. If anything, this leads me to suspect that a change in accounting for depreciation may be used to make the budget look better than it is. But I'm no expert in these matters -- just speculating.

    In any case, I don't remember seeing it mentioned in the 2007 draft budget, so I searched the entire document in Acrobat and found no reference to the string "GASB 34" or even "Government Accounting" (in case they spelled out "Government Accounting Standards Board").

    If GASB 34 has a material impact on the 2007 budget and its comparison to previous years, then Copeland has again proven himself to be a worthless incompetent by failing to mention it or explain its relevance to the numbers in the budget.

    Thanks for bringing this to our attention. Now we can wonder what other things Copeland should know about in order to do his job, but doesn't.

     
  • At 4:56 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Congrats for opening up the budget book. Well at least we know the Rossbachians and Juenemanites can read.

    I think though that they need to broaden their horizons. If the biggest statement is that 38% of the budget comes from property taxes vs. 30%, then I think they are not seeing the forest through the trees. I.e. you are missing the point.

    On the issue of GASB 34... read up on it. Pretty interesting stuff. Adding depreciation to the city budget will result in major changes to the budget. Even the Rossbachians had to admit that they were surprised at the -8% change.

    Does this change make the budget look bettter than it is? Quite possibly. But be cautious on your quick shift of blame to Longristas. This is much larger than them. I doubt the Longristas had the power to order this change nationwide.

    Is Copeland incpmpetent for failing to mention GASB 34? Well Copeland is responsible for giving a budget summary, not a full reading of the budget. He has to presume that the Rossbachians and Juenemanites can read the book for themselves. We can ask Copeland to go through the budget at a meeting with a fine toothed comb, but then we know the Juenemanites would grow impatient since I bet a full reading of the budget would probably take 10 or more hours.

    Seems like Copeland is doing his job to me. He brought up the reorganization issue. Maybe he should have said nothing about that and just talked about GASB 34. Heck, maybe the Rossbachinans never read the budget and would have just voted no based on GASB 34.

    Maybe someone should ask the GASB 34 question at the next council meeting. Sounds like a good job for the Rossbachians to carry out. Look forward to seeing it at the next meeting. Get to work,

    Sincerely,

    69.46.25.42

     
  • At 6:09 PM, Blogger Frostbrand said…

    Dear Troll from 64.131.7.123, claiming to be from 69.46.25.42:

    So...why did YOU not bother to open up the budget and use actual facts rather than made-up details?

    Why should anyone give your comments any serious consideration, given that you don't put any effort at all into getting the facts right? Time and again, you have declared something to be a fact, and when we looked into it we found that you had simply made it up.

    It's true that 38% of the city's revenue, not the 30% you claimed, comes from property taxes. This means the city's budget is heavily dependent upon the other sources of revenue, and what those sources don't provide will need to come from property taxes.

    Of course, this has always been the case. Past councils and city managers have labored under the same constraint.

    And, bottom line, they did a better job, year after year, of serving the interests of Maplewood's taxpayers. The Gang of Three is good at complaining (Hjelle is like a walking whine machine -- "Xcel Energy ate my baby!" or whatever he's crying about this week), but have shown no actual talent for governing.

     
  • At 6:39 PM, Blogger Frostbrand said…

    Again responding to our Troll from 64.131.7.123, claiming to be from 69.46.25.42; on the topic of GASB 34:

    > Is Copeland incpmpetent for failing
    > to mention GASB 34? Well Copeland is
    > responsible for giving a budget
    > summary, not a full reading of the
    > budget.

    I wasn't referring to Copeland's budget summary from the meeting. The draft budget is 193 pages; you can get it from the front page of the city's website. I ran a search on the entire document, and nowhere found "GASB" mentioned.

    Download the budget, run the search yourself, tell me the page if I've missed it.

    Copeland prepared the budget. The city council had to understand it, so they could vote on it and, when they thought it necessary, make changes. That is what we elect them to do. Copeland's job is to give them the information they need to understand the budget and to make decisions on our behalf. And, because city government is required by law to be open, it's also his job to share this information with the citizens.

    I know you want to see the city run "like a business." Well, if you've ever read annual reports and SEC filings (such as Form 10-K and Form 10-Q) from publicly traded companies, you'll know that they explain changes in FASB rules all the time. (GASB = government accounting rules, FASB = business.) For example, when rules changed on the accounting for stock options, or for the accounting of securitized loan portfolios, those reports included meticulous explanations of what the rules changes were, what effect they had, and how the statements would look different in the past and present if not for the rules changes, so that investors can make informed decisions.

    If GASB 34 had a material impact upon the budget and its comparisons to previous years, then yes, Copeland was incompetent if he did not bring it up and explain it, especially since there are 3 new people on the council who have never done a city budget before.

    I suspect that GASB 34 had no material impact on the budget, and that you merely brought it up as yet another red herring to excuse Copeland and the Gang of Three for their inept fiscal management.

    On page 10 of the budget, we can see that the difference in the Capital Outlay and Depreciation classification of the budget is only $118,520. It's really a stretch to imagine that a change in accounting rules affecting that number would account for the $1.4 million tax increase. So I don't think this can be pulled out to excuse the horrible budget, any more than the community center repairs could (especially since they were mostly cut from the final budget anyhow).

    However, if you are right and it did have a big impact on the budget and Copeland didn't bother to explain its relevance and impact, then he's still an incompetent, just in slightly different way.

    If someone would like to ask about GASB 34 at the next council meeting, that sounds great to me.

     
  • At 6:46 PM, Blogger Frostbrand said…

    By the way, just to remind readers of Diana's sock puppet's earlier comment:

    > What if the past 5 years show that 4
    > of them had double digit increases?
    > Then that makes it look like you are
    > splitting hairs and damages your
    > credibility. What if the past 5 year
    > average of tax increases are double
    > digit, then you lose more
    > credibility.

    I just want to gloat a little, since in my most recent post I documented that

    A. Only ONE of past five years had a double-digit increase.

    B. The AVERAGE of the past five years was not double digit.

    If Diana's sock puppet is looking for some credibility that needs questioning, maybe someone needs to point her to a mirror. :)

     
  • At 2:46 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    In this case, I certainly think a little gloating is fair.

     

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