'Misleading' mailer spurs city response
Calling the numbers “misleading,”
Whitefish Finance Director Rich Knapp has responded to an email and
election mailer sent out last week by Rick Blake that regards city
expenditures per capita.
Blake, who is behind the We Love
Stumptown PAC, sent a mailer and email that included a graph
comparing Whitefish to Kalispell, Polson and Columbia Falls. The
numbers show Whitefish’s total fiscal year 2012 budget divided by
Whitefish’s total population set by the 2010 census. A bar graph is
used to show that Whitefish’s city expenditures per capita is
$5,946, compared to the three other cities which are all below
$2,500.
In an email to Whitefish city
councilors, Knapp calls the comparison misleading because it
compares total budget and doesn’t break down what is included in
the total appropriated budget.
“Also, it doesn’t explain where the
money came from — how could we be so high per capita yet have [the]
second lowest mill levy in the state?” he states in the email.
Blake told the Pilot the graph in the
email showed the total expenditures of the city. “Either the city
spent the money or they didn’t,” he said.
Knapp says there are many variables
that may make Whitefish’s expenditures different than the other
cities.
“This total appropriated divided by
population comparison fails to take into account how much grant
monies the municipality is budgeting to spend,” Knapp said, “how
much is budgeted to be spent in the current year on capital from
previous years’ accumulation or from debt, how much is strictly
interfund transfers, and it does not compare services provided in
each city and the level of service.”
He goes on to explain that the FY 2012
budget includes capital grants and loans that total at least $5.54
million, including the $3.3 million TIGER grant and $2.14 million
in resort tax funded projects.
“Included in the $37.8 million
appropriated budget are $6.45 million in interfund transfers,”
Knapp goes on to explain. “Transfers should not be included when
determining total expenditures, because that would be double
counting that $6.45 million.”
He also notes that the other cities
compared may not have services or resources that Whitefish has.
Knapp points to $5 million in TIF funds, and Special Improvement
Districts that includes $2.4 million for the Whitefish Trail.