If there’s any topic that’s more exciting than algebra, it has to be accounting. So, close on the heels of my last post regarding the algebra of the real estate revenue increases, this this post is all about inter-fund transfers in the Town of Vienna budget.
That really gets the blood pounding, doesn’t it?
Let me rephrase that. This post is about our water and sewer bills. It’s about how the Town of Vienna has managed to siphon off an additional $1+ million dollars, from those water and sewer bills, between the budget three years back, and this year’s proposed budget, and use that money to fund general government services.
Who cares?
Well, the sharp increases in the Town of Vienna water and sewer bills were sold to the citizenry as necessary to fund much-needed repairs and maintenance of the sewer and water system. Seems that there was a significant backlog of deferred maintenance. And so, sewer and water rates were going to have to increase — a lot — or you’d risk catastrophic failure of our infrastructure.
You don’t want us to be the next Flint, Michigan, do you?
At least, that’s how I recall it. I faithfully parroted that line in defending the initial increases in those rates.
But it’s more than that. Not only do I not recall anybody saying those water and sewer bill increases would substitute for general tax revenues, I recall a sitting Town Council member going out of his way to deny, in a Town Council meeting, that that would ever happen. No, the Town had no plans to subsidize the general cost of government with the sewer and water revenues, and anybody who raised that as an issue was just engaging in baseless speculation.
So, here we are, more than a million dollars of baseless speculation later, and ..
Well, to hell with it. He said, she said, they said, we said.
Numbers. Just shut up and do the numbers.
And there you go. Taken from various Town budgets, for which I can supply citation as to document and page number if needed.
The upshot is more-or-less a game of two for you, one for me. Rounding up, 40% of the increase in the water and sewer bills has gone into the general fund, to fund the general operation of government.
Virtually all of that is in the last three years, where, apparently, a policy decision was made to increase that transfer by a steady $400K a year or so. To the point where the proposed transfer for FY 22-23 actually exceeds the projected increase in revenues.
Maybe I mis-remember this. But three years of big increases in that transfer figure just leapt off the page. That’s completely at odds with everything that I thought I recalled about this issue.
I’m sure the Town will have its own spin on this. I’ve read what was in the budget this year, and near as I can tell, the explanation this year is “inflation”. That’s pretty lame, and doesn’t explain the clear change in policy starting two years back.
That said, if I’m the only one who perceives that giant sucking sound, then the Town simply doesn’t have to care.
When it comes to sewer and water, they’re effectively an unregulated monopoly, supplying a good and service with almost completely inelastic demand. They say it, we pay it. And Vienna is so bouzhy that none of the people who matter are going to complain about a few bucks on the water bill. Or what the Town does with that. It’s just a price we pay for living in such an affluent town.
