Burlington’s efforts to raise public awareness about the city’s proposed bond referendums were well underway by the time that the city’s leaders heard from the public on Tuesday.
In fact, members of Burlington’s city staff had already refined their outreach campaign by the time that they rehearsed their presentation for the council during a regularly-scheduled work session on Monday.
During that evening’s proceedings, city manager Craig Honeycutt acknowledged the council wasn’t even the first group to hear the staff’s putatively educational primer about the two bond packages that the council intends to pitch to the local electorate in November’s general election.
“We did a quick presentation to the chamber last week,” the city manager said. “But we wanted to present this to the council tonight to make sure you understood it…This is your message, and we want to make sure we get the message correct.”
Honeycutt then yield the floor to Morgan Lasater, the city’s community engagement director, to rehash the presentation that the city had previously debuted at the Alamance County Area Chamber of Commerce. Lasater went on to share a brief PowerPoint show that she said she and her colleagues had crafted with the intent to present the two bond packages in what they said was as neutral a manner as possible.
“We can’t advocate for the bond,” she stressed. “But we can educate the public on the bond.”
Lasater’s slide show began with a breakdown of the proposed outlays for each of the two bond issues. One package, which boasts a total value of $47 million, would provide $11 million to renovate and expand Burlington’s Paramount Theater, $6 million to erect a new structure over the Maynard Aquatic Center, and $30 million to develop a “Sportsplex” on the western side of the city. The other package, which weighs in at $21.5 million, would raise $15 million for street repair and resurfacing, $1.5 million for sidewalk construction and maintenance, and $5 million for “streetscaping” in Burlington’s downtown development district.
Laster went on to present detailed information about each bond packages constituent projects as well as some projections for the property tax impact of the proposed bonds. According to the city’s calculations, the repayment of the larger bond package would force the city to add 3.4 cents to its current property tax rate of 48.36 cents for every $100 of property value. The smaller package would demand an increase of 2.3 cents for a combined tax hike of 5.7 cents should both sets of bonds get the local electorate’s nod.
The community engagement director’s promise to “educate” rather than “advocate” was ultimately undercut by some of the remarks she made during the slide show. Lasater stumbled out of neutral territory, for instance, when she flatly pronounced general obligation bonds as “the most fiscally responsible way to do these kinds of projects” without revealing the pros and cons of alternative methods. Her slide show also included a few words on economic impact that were hard to construe as anything but tendentious.
“When visitors come to an area for a sporting event,” this particular slide argues, “they spend money on accommodations, dining, transportation and shopping, which can boost the local economy. It creates job opportunities, increases tax revenue, boosts local businesses and can attract new businesses to the area.”
In his post-op on Lasater’s PowerPoint, Honeycutt conceded that lack of hard data in the section on economic impact failed to impress the leadership of local chamber of commerce.
“We’re trying to quantify that,” the city manager added, “[to show] what are ripple effects from the upgrades and projects.”
In the meantime, council member Dejuana Bigelow took issue with the staff’s illustrations of the property tax impact, which were based on a tax value of $100,000 and not the assessed worth of a typical area home.
Yet, the staff’s presentation seemed a touch too restrained for Burlington’s mayor Jim Butler, who raised several points in support of the bonds that Lasater and her colleagues omitted. Butler noted, for instance, that the city’s recreation and parks master plan has called for a western rec center akin to the proposed sportsplex since 2012. He also argued that the staff’s projected tax impact fails to account for factors that he suspects will reduce the actual toll of the bond issues.
“The [figure] on the ballot will be worst case scenario,” he went on to explain. “The reality is that we’re replacing a lot of old, expiring debt with new debt…and there are already revenue streams in place to absorb a pretty good chunk of this.
“Another thing that I think is important for the community to understand,” he added, “is that we didn’t have to go this route. Installment financing is another route. But this is the most fiscally conservative, beneficial to the community approach.”
