Recently, there has been a great deal of dust kicked up by bloggers and letter writers who are somehow horrified that the issue of a new drainage fee was discussed at the end of the final day of budget workshops last month. Phrases like “sleight of hand”, “shell game”, “collusion”, and “dishonorable behavior” have been bandied about by individuals who clearly believed that the City staff deliberately placed the item late at night to sneak the item past an unsuspecting public. As one blogger said, “No wonder the topic was saved for the last item on a long night's budget session agenda.”

The implication that the City staff put this on as the last agenda item on a late night session to somehow sneak something past the citizens of Richardson is, in a word, simply untrue. It’s untrue for three reasons:
1. agendas at City Council budget workshops are not tightly controlled timewise
2. the proposed drainage fee could not be part of the original 2009-2010 budget anyway
3. it didn’t occur to City staff that anyone would be surprised by the drainage fee discussion – since this was at least the NINTH time in 2 years that the possible drainage fee had been mentioned in official City communications and meetings.

Budget Workshop Agendas
The first thing to understand that while this year’s budget discussions took three evenings (Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday), they were, in fact, scheduled for as many as four days, as they are every year. That is, the City staff and the City Council have a huge amount of ground to cover, and they allocate four days to do it. So they start on Monday and see how far they get. Then they resume on Tuesday and see how far they get. Then they resume on Wednesday and see how far they get. Then, if need be, they resume on Thursday, and do their damndest to finish before the 4th evening is done.

This is the way is has been for years with the budget review process; when Monday evening starts, there is no telling on what item will be the last one on Monday, which item will be the last one on Tuesday, and so on. It just starts, and they see how it goes, because there is no way of knowing how much discussion by the Council members will ensue on each item.

Thus, the presumption that the Mayor and the City Manager “colluded” for the drainage fee item to be last item on Wednesday evening is not valid on its face. When they started Monday, they had no way of knowing if this item would be the first item on Wednesday, the last item on Wednesday, or perhaps an item sometime on Thursday. To assume that because it was the last item, that the powers-that-be meant for it to be late in the evening, would be the same as assuming that because a public hearing at a Council meeting began at 10 p.m. rather than 8 p.m. that this was the result of a conspiracy, rather than understanding that the previous public hearing just ran long.

Proposed Drainage Fee Not Part of the 2009-2010 Budget
Clearly, the bloggers and letter writers did not understand why the drainage fee was not presented as part of the budget. The answer is simple - as Deputy City Manager Dan Johnson made very clear during the budget process (as reported by Ian McCann in his Dallas Morning News blog ), the City staff wasn’t even sure that the Council still wanted to pursue a Municipal Drainage Utility (the formal definition by State law that enables the specific drainage fee – please see “Texas Local Government Code, Title 13. Water and Utilities, Subtitle A. Municipal Water and Utilities, Chapter 552. Municipal Utilities, Subchapter C. Municipal Drainage Utility Systems” ), and even if the Council did, then there were still a number of things that would have to be addressed before the Utility and its fee could be implemented. In short, the 2009-2010 budget would have to be approved before the drainage fee could be approved, no matter how the Council felt about it.

Now, there are a number of Funds in the Richardson City Budget, funds that we know that have to be approved as part of the regular annual budget. But the City’s fiscal year begins on October 1st, so the budget must be approved prior to October 1st (last year, for example, it was approved at the September 8, 2008 meeting ).

But Deputy City Manager Dan Johnson stated during the budget hearings that the public hearings required by State law on the proposed Municipal Drainage Utility could not even begin until at least October (see Ian McCann’s blog entry ) and his article in the print edition of The Dallas Morning News, July 31 2009, page B-3). Therefore, the possible drainage fee could not be part of the regular City budget for 2009-2010, even if it is added later during the fiscal year.

Why would you expect it to be discussed first rather than last? At the point that the staff brought the item up, they didn’t even know if the Council – three members of which (43%) are brand new to the Council – would even want to pursue this fee. And certainly the public hearing(s) in October could change whether it is approved or how it gets implemented.

Of course, it was the last thing discussed – because it was the most “iffy” item on the agenda. The fact that it landed on Wednesday late night rather then Thursday early evening was chance, as anyone would have known had they ever attended previous budget workshops.

Nine Times? Really?

• In the late summer of 2007  as part of the 2007-2008 budget process, the possibility of a drainage fee was mentioned in the City document entitled “Overview of the City of Richardson’s Fiscal Year 2007-2008 Budget”.
• In February 2008 , the Council was briefed on pending Richardson requirements and upcoming deadlines under the Texas Pollution Discharge Elimination System regulations, which is the main cause for discussion on the drainage fee.
• On July 14, 2008 , the drainage fee itself was the subject of a briefing at the City Council Workshop.
• On August 8, 2008 , a document entitled “2008-2009 Budget Overview” was created as part of the 2008-2009 budget process, and the drainage fee was mentioned.
• In the October 2008  edition of Richardson Today (yes, the newsletter mailed to all Richardson residents), the drainage fee was mentioned in the article describing the overview of the 2008-2009 budget.
• On November 3, 2008 , the Council was updated again on the drainage fee at the City Council Workshop.
• On November 18, 2008 , the City Council and City staff discussed the drainage fee with all the presidents of the City’s homeowners associations at the monthly City Council/Homeowner Presidents Meeting.
• On July 6, 2009 , in the review of the “near term action items” derived from the goals setting process that had taken place over the last two months, in a City Council Workshop, the Council explicitly set the review of the drainage fee as an action item.
• On July 22, 2009 , during the City Council Budget Workshop, the City Council was briefed again on the drainage fee, for the third time in two years.

In short, since the City has talked repeatedly about the proposed drainage fee for at least two years, it wouldn’t have occurred to them that some people would think that the accidental timing of the presentation late Wednesday evening during the Budget Workshops would be construed as anything other than the happenstance that it was.

Certainly, the City staff and City Council in no way deserve to be called “dishonest” or accused of engaging in “sleight of hand”. Just as the City staff and City Council have a duty to be open with the public, so the public has the duty to avail itself of the information freely provided by the City and to educate itself on how our City operates. There is no place in our community for negative comments by individuals who haven’t done so.

Bill McCalpin is a long time Richardson resident. This editorial was unsolicited and the author is solely responsible for its content.