The City of Montevideo has been careful in budgeting for reduced LGA, but is informing residents that further cuts will impact essential services, such as police and snowplowing. As reported by the Montevideo American-News, the city stands to lose $365,000 under the legislative majority’s current proposal. While the city has a contingency plan for this round of cuts, residents will notice the fall-out of further state aid reductions:

“We’re at a place where we’ve cut everything we can cut,” Jones said. “There is no fat left. We have already reduced staff, which is where the majority of the money is spent.”

To read the full report, click here.

With nearly three feet of snow falling this December in many areas of the state, some cities may plow through their snow removal budget before the end of the year. In the City of Rochester, the public works department has been overburdened by the cost of overtime for its employees, fuel for its fleet of snowplows and rental trucks for snow removal. According to a report from KTTC-TV, any additional snow accumulation may force the city to dig into other budget areas to cover the cost of keeping streets clear.

Years of cuts to LGA have forced cities like Rochester to cut essential services and increase property taxes on residents and businesses. This has resulted in increased property tax and service disparities across the state, which LGA was intended to alleviate. Cities in all corners of the state need to be strong and affordable in order to attract businesses and families, so during this upcoming legislative session, be sure to contact your legislators and urge them to maintain current LGA funding.

UPDATE: The Star Tribune reports that recent snow emergencies have also forced Minneapolis and St. Paul to deplete their snow removal budgets.

Raising property taxes, laying off employees, cutting services, increasing fees and consolidating services with neighboring cities. These are all tactics that greater Minnesota cities are exploring as they weather a financial crisis caused by factors such as declining state aid, aging populations and decreasing property values. Minnesota Public Radio’s Ground Level blog is currently examining the issues facing cities as they piece together their budgets for 2011 and reports that after years of budget cuts, cities have few easy options to pursue. This is a must-read series that anyone interested in the future stability of cities should read. Below are selected entries of particular interest:

• Angst-filled cities look for budget cuts, new ways to do things, 9/14/2010
• Local government aid 101, 9/9/2010
• Cities scrape for dollars, even in police budgets, 9/3/2010

In the past week, editorial boards from greater Minnesota newspapers have been weighing in on state actions that have significantly reduced their communities’ state funding dollars. Programs like LGA and Market Value Credit (MVC) help alleviate property tax disparities that exist between rural Minnesota and wealthier communities, which in turn strengthens the economic viability of the state as a whole. These programs also help communities provide essential services like police, fire protection, libraries, parks, and safe roads while keeping property taxes affordable. With the state having cut LGA by over $1 billion since 2002, communities that receive LGA are sacrificing quality-of-life services and asking property taxpayers to pay more for less, causing editorial writers to question the direction in which lawmakers are taking greater Minnesota.

The Mankato Free Press is concerned that LGA cuts will negatively impact the business climate in rural Minnesota, which is dependent on affordable property tax rates in order to attract and retain small businesses. Continue reading »

The Star Tribune Editorial Board weighed in today on the results of deep cuts to LGA that Minnesota lawmakers have made over the past years. Across the state, the editorial says, cities are cutting essential public safety and quality-of-life services such as library hours, parks, and safe roads.

Reductions in city services have become so commonplace in Minnesota that they barely attract local mention, let alone notice at the State Capitol. State aid cuts and freezes since 2003 and declining property values since 2008 have wrung things deemed easily expendable out of the budgets of cities all across the map.

But after the 2010 Legislature’s latest $66 million cut and its affirmation of Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s $150 million unallotment of state aid to cities, decisions are being made in Minnesota’s city halls that ought to get state lawmakers’ attention. The services that city leaders typically protect when budgets get tight—police and fire—are on the chopping block now.

Read the full editorial here.

With Governor Pawlenty signing the legislature’s supplemental budget bill into law last week, cities across the state are engaging in budget cutting discussions now that they have a clearer sense of their state aid reductions. Under the bill, LGA  and the Market Value Homestead Credit will be cut by $52.5 million in 2010 and $56.5 million in 2011. This is a vast improvement on the governor’s original budget proposal, which would have cut these programs by $125 million in 2010 and $252 million in 2011.

It’s difficult to imagine the consequences of the governor’s proposal on Minnesota’s communities considering that the legislature’s smaller cuts will still have a significant impact on essential city services and the affordability of being a city resident. Years of repeated cuts to LGA have left cities with few budget-cutting options to choose from—reserves are drained, hiring freezes are in place, capital equipment and improvements have been delayed. Below are just a few examples gathered since the budget bill signing of how cities are adjusting their 2010 budgets in the wake of these most recent cuts. Continue reading »

St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman and Wadena Mayor Wayne Wolden, spokesperson for the Coalition of Greater Minnesota Cities, released the following statement in response to Governor Pawlenty’s decision to spare LGA from December unallotment:

We applaud and thank Governor Pawlenty for recognizing that Minnesota cities have hit the financial edge and additional cuts would jeopardize public safety and do further harm to our fledgling economy.

Over the past year we have done everything we can to speak out for cities across the state to show how critical services like police, fire, snowplowing, libraries and property taxes have been affected by continued cuts to local government aid.

Over the past seven years Minnesota cities have lost $754 million in LGA and the consequences have been profound-a 64% increase in property taxes and significant cuts to core services like police, fire, snow plowing and libraries.

As a major winter storm is bearing down on us, the critical role our cities play in the lives of our citizens is no more apparent than today.  Across the state, cities are battling the storm by plowing streets, dropping salt and doing everything we can to protect the safety of Minnesota families.   All of us know that this comes at a cost.

We look forward to working with the governor and the legislature in the upcoming session to ensure our cities will continue to be protected.

Finalizing their 2010 budgets over the next few weeks, cities across the state are making t0ugh decisions about what services to cut in light of state aid losses. The City of Mankato, which is staring down a $1.5 million cut in state aid for 2010, recently announced that it will cut its snow removal budget by keeping overtime hours to a minimum and restructuring plowing policies, such as plowing main roads before residential roads and plowing only two lanes of major four-lane roads. In some cases, snow plows may only pass residential roads once, and snow emergencies—which can close certain roads altogether—will be called more often. The city decided to implement these cuts as a way to keep property tax increases to a minimum. Learn more about cuts to snow removal budgets in the video below: