The San Bruno Beacon

In my opinion, the City of San Bruno is dying a painful financial death because of the reckless and grossly negligent decisions made by San Bruno's City Council and Manager.

Four out of five Members of the San Bruno City Council have been on the Council for more than 12 years. The fifth one has been there for about 3 years parroting the bad decisions of his Council cronies. They talk about their experience during elections. Their experience consists of trashing the City of San Bruno's finances, drowning the City in debt, and leading San Bruno down the road to bankruptcy. You could say that the San Bruno City Council is a financial wrecking crew.

Connie Jackson was appointed as San Bruno's City Manager in 2003. Until this year, Jackson's pitiful 5 year tenure as San Bruno's City Manager has been plagued by chronic annual budget deficits in the $500,000 per year range. Now, the City of San Bruno is projecting an annual budget deficit of approximately $1.5 million per year. It seems that the longer Jackson is San Bruno's City Manager, the worse things get for San Bruno's residents and their City.

I think it is now embarrassingly clear that San Bruno City Manager Connie Jackson needs to resign or be fired. It takes three Council votes to fire Jackson. As I see it, the Council probably won't fire her because she will make an easy scapegoat for them if the City finally goes bankrupt. That being said, the fact remains that it is not only Jackson's fault that San Bruno is walking down the road to bankruptcy; both the City Council and Jackson will share the blame and responsibility for San Bruno's financial demise as the political, financial, and legal curtains come crashing down on them.

To save San Bruno, the current Members of the San Bruno City Council need to resign or be recalled at the earliest possible convenience of San Bruno's voters. Their decisions have resulted in skyrocketing rates and fees on City sponsored services accompanied by rich salaries, benefits, and retirement plans for San Bruno's senior Management employees. This City Council has handed out millions of San Bruno taxpayer dollars to pay for the Redevelopment scheme they hatched. When is this money going to be paid back and exactly who received all of these millions of taxpayer dollars? To add insult to injury, San Bruno's City Manager has personally borrowed what may be hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to finance her personal home. She refuses to disclose exactly how much money she borrowed and what the terms of this loan are.

The real estate interests profiting from Redevelopment and City Manager Connie Jackson feed on the taxpayer dollars that belong to San Bruno's residents. San Bruno's residents pay to support the money being fed to these people. In return for this generosity, San Bruno's residents get punished with higher rates, fees, and taxes.

City Manager Jackson and this Council almost destroyed San Bruno's tax revenue base last year by attempting to increase San Bruno's City Sales Tax with their Measure F scheme that was rejected by voters and on which they may have spent as much as $300,000 in San Bruno taxpayer money. Measure F was a reckless, amateurish move that would have destroyed many San Bruno businesses while driving others away from San Bruno. How are Jackson and the City Council planning on recovering this money that they wasted on Measure F? Perhaps the City Council and Jackson should reimburse the City for the cost of their failed Measure F scheme out of their own pockets? Now there's an idea that could help balance San Bruno's City Budget!

I have warned San Bruno's City Council and City Manager many times to cut City spending and turn the City's annual budget deficit into a budget surplus. They don't listen and the annual deficits get bigger. Education may be a factor in their inability to understand that their failed schemes are leading San Bruno into bankruptcy. Nobody on the San Bruno City Council has a Bachelor's level degree in finance or accounting. As a matter of fact, San Bruno now has a Mayor with little more than a high school diploma, so he can hardly be expected to understand the complexities of municipal finances. Maybe stupidity is a factor. Some of the stuff this Council does is painfully stupid and defies logic. Then again, maybe there is another reason for all of this anomalous behavior when it comes to the City's finances?

Whatever these Council Members lack in formal finance related education, they more than make up for in arrogance. In the complex arena of municipal finance; arrogance, ignorance, lack of formal education in the fields of finance and/or accounting, and outright stupidity are a recipe for financial death.

At its 05-07-2008 Meeting, the City of Vallejo City Council voted 7-0 to declare Chapter 9 Bankruptcy. Vallejo is now going bankrupt because the fools on the Vallejo City Council did exactly what the fools on the San Bruno City Council have been doing. They dug themselves into a hole during the past 10-20 years by caving in to almost every demand the public employee unions made for higher wages and benefits. Finally, when the proverbial well ran dry, the unions were left out in the cold when the City Council finally had no more money to feed the unions with.

If the Vallejo City Council really wanted to help union members they would have held the line on wages, benefits, and retirement plans during the past 10-20 years so that many of these very same union members promised higher wages and benefits would not have to lose their jobs now that there is no more money.

A salary/benefit increase doesn't do a union member much good if that union member loses their job as a result of the salary/benefit increase. Once again, arrogance, ignorance, and stupidity results in another disaster. This time union members and their families will suffer. Not unlike their union brothers in Vallejo who supported the City Council and Manager; many union members who work for the City of San Bruno and support San Bruno's current City Council and Manager will be paid back for this support by losing their jobs. Union contracts that an employer cannot support financially are not worth the paper they are written on. Bankruptcy proceedings can shred almost any contract.

At their Wednesday, May 14, 2008 Board Meeting, the San Bruno Park School District (SBPSD) Board of Trustees is going to try to ram yet another parcel tax down the throats of San Bruno's residents in the November 2008 Election. This at a time when housing prices are crashing, the economy is in a recession, and gas prices are well above $4 per gallon.

You can bet that the people behind this parcel tax scheme will start printing brochures and other propaganda filled with pictures of children that talk about how the children are our future, our children need your money, etc. Unfortunately, the tax load on many of the parents of these very same children is going to be so great that, combined with their mortgage and all of their other bills, these children's parents may lose their homes and not be able to send their kids to the very same school district that is causing them to lose their home. So maybe we can print up brochures and pamphlets with children standing in front of a house with a "foreclosed sign" on the lawn? Is that the type of future we are taking about for our children and their families?

Last year, San Bruno's sales tax revenue based was threatened by the City's reckless Measure F tax scheme that would have raised your sales taxes, destroyed local businesses, and driven consumers out of San Bruno. We fought Measure F, we won. This year, the San Bruno Park School District (SBPSD) Board of Trustees is threatening to increase the financial pain on you and your family by spending your tax dollars against you in an attempt to raise your property taxes with yet another SBPSD school district parcel tax. Look at your property tax bill and you will see how you are being buried in school district property taxes by the San Bruno Park Elementary School District, the San Mateo Union High School District, and the San Mateo Junior College District. The financial problems associated with skyrocketing property taxes exacerbate the weak financial position of many families and this leads to other serious and potentially dangerous social problems. To add insult to injury, much of this taxpayer money being handed over to these School Districts is being squandered and misspent.

The accounting controls at the SBPSD are so bad that the SBPSD has paid out money to Members of the San Bruno Park School District (SBPSD) Board of Trustees when these people were not entitled to the money the District paid to them. This payout scandal went on for several years while this money was drained out of the District's Treasury. Now, San Bruno Park School District Superintendent David Hutt refuses to subject the SBPSD to a thorough audits of the District's internal financial and accounting controls.

Yet, SBPSD Superintendent Hutt is running around trying to sue one of the former SBPSD Board Members who isn't paying back SBPSD money that Hutt wrongfully paid out to him in the form of insurance premiums for several years. With all of the problems that Hutt has created for the SBPSD, you would think he would spend more of his time acting like a Superintendent instead of playing the part of an ineffective bill collector.

Can you imagine passing a parcel tax so this guy Hutt will have even more of your tax dollars to play with?

But this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to problems at the SBPSD. Not unlike the City of San Bruno, the SBPSD requires new management and some new elected officials who will not squander the taxpayer money they are given, learn how to make necessary cuts, and live within their budget just like every one of San Bruno's residents must do when they budget for their family's expenses.

Bleeding San Bruno's taxpayers with yet another parcel tax to pay for the incompetence and mistakes of the SBPSD Board of Trustees and Superintendent will not bring better education to San Bruno. It will only encourage more fiscal irresponsibility from this group that has proven themselves incapable of making prudent financial decisions that will benefit the children of San Bruno.