The new recycling carts are being delivered. Use of the new carts will start in January.
For the rest of December, please continue to use the totes.
In January, you are free to either recycle your old tote (toss it in the cart!), keep it as a souvenir, display it in your personal museum or use it for storage. Unfortunately, it probably won't work well as a sled.
The new carts are accompanied by information about the new single-stream recycling system and collection dates for recyclables. Note that recyclables will be collected once every two weeks.
Refuse will continue to be collected exactly as it was before. This will continue to occur every week and an unlimited quantity will be collected from the curb. The same restrictions on electronics waste, hazardous waste, etc. will still apply.
Friday, December 16, 2011
Thursday, November 17, 2011
2012 City of Verona budget and tax rate
The recommended 2012 City of Verona budget is now available for public review and comment. The word "recommended" means that:
2012 is currently recommended to have primarily a "cost-to-continue" budget, meaning that we're mostly aiming to maintain existing service levels. Even this approach results in a 1.5% increase in property taxes, or an increase of $23.40 on a home assessed at $250,000.
The school of thought shared by several of us elected officials is that it's better to have small tax increases each year than to have 0% increases some years and larger increases other years. The City's costs to provide services go up each year and we can only cut so much before we need to take an increase to catch back up. By smoothing out the increases each every year, we can make it easier for taxpayers to adapt.
The Fire Department will see an increase in staffing that is roughly half of what its strategic plan calls for this year. We currently have a full crew at the station 8 hours/day and the plan called for increasing that to 12 hours/day in 2012. We'll actually be going to 10 hours/day. It's a small step that keeps our fire protection services moving in the right direction at minimal increased cost.
One of the issues we're keenly aware of is that the vast majority of the City of Verona's staff salaries are well below the average of comparable communities. This creates problems when trying to attract and retain quality staff. Keep in mind that we run a pretty lean ship when it comes to staffing quantities, so we need above average performance out of the people that we have on-board. The 2012 budget adds $40K out of an estimated $100K needed to close that gap.
One of the most heavily debated topics was adding another police officer this year. The Police Department has a very solid analysis of where their staffing level should be, and 2012 as proposed will have them one officer short. Adding another police officer would have meant another 1.2% increase in the mill rate - almost doubling the existing increase. The current feeling is that it's simply not fair to ask taxpayers to absorb this additional cost when many of them continue to struggle this year.
There is a lot more detail included in the Mayor's memo at the top of the budget document itself. Click here to view it.
A Committee of the Whole meeting for budget discussion is scheduled for Monday 11/21 at 6pm at City Hall. The official public hearing will be the following Monday 11/28 at 7pm during the usual Common Council meeting.
- The department heads made their requests
- Administration made some adjustments
- The Finance Committee made decisions on priorities
- Administration made further adjustments in response to those decisions
- The budget now goes to the public and the full Common Council for everyone else to weigh in
2012 is currently recommended to have primarily a "cost-to-continue" budget, meaning that we're mostly aiming to maintain existing service levels. Even this approach results in a 1.5% increase in property taxes, or an increase of $23.40 on a home assessed at $250,000.
The school of thought shared by several of us elected officials is that it's better to have small tax increases each year than to have 0% increases some years and larger increases other years. The City's costs to provide services go up each year and we can only cut so much before we need to take an increase to catch back up. By smoothing out the increases each every year, we can make it easier for taxpayers to adapt.
The Fire Department will see an increase in staffing that is roughly half of what its strategic plan calls for this year. We currently have a full crew at the station 8 hours/day and the plan called for increasing that to 12 hours/day in 2012. We'll actually be going to 10 hours/day. It's a small step that keeps our fire protection services moving in the right direction at minimal increased cost.
One of the issues we're keenly aware of is that the vast majority of the City of Verona's staff salaries are well below the average of comparable communities. This creates problems when trying to attract and retain quality staff. Keep in mind that we run a pretty lean ship when it comes to staffing quantities, so we need above average performance out of the people that we have on-board. The 2012 budget adds $40K out of an estimated $100K needed to close that gap.
One of the most heavily debated topics was adding another police officer this year. The Police Department has a very solid analysis of where their staffing level should be, and 2012 as proposed will have them one officer short. Adding another police officer would have meant another 1.2% increase in the mill rate - almost doubling the existing increase. The current feeling is that it's simply not fair to ask taxpayers to absorb this additional cost when many of them continue to struggle this year.
There is a lot more detail included in the Mayor's memo at the top of the budget document itself. Click here to view it.
A Committee of the Whole meeting for budget discussion is scheduled for Monday 11/21 at 6pm at City Hall. The official public hearing will be the following Monday 11/28 at 7pm during the usual Common Council meeting.
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Refuse and recycling updates
This week, the Common Council approved a new refuse and recycling collection contract with Waste Management. The new contract goes in to effect in December and runs through the end of 2016.
We'll still have the feature that seems to be the favorite among City of Verona residents: unlimited garbage collection. With the exception of certain regulated items (like electronics waste), you can still place however much of whatever you want at the curb and it'll get hauled away.
Three things will change:
1) The current City of Verona recommended budget calls for the refuse and recycling line item on our property tax bills to increase from $150 per year to $160. Some contractors don't even offer an unlimited rate anymore, and the ones that do need to charge more for it due to disposal cost increases. All of us on the Council seem to feel that the strong popularity of the unlimited refuse collection justifies this $10 per year increase.
2) Recycling will go to an automated every-other-week collection. Waste Management will provide each household with a 96-gallon recycling cart along with a calendar showing the dates it'll be collected. I lived in Madison when they went to this system and it seemed to work quite well once everyone got used to it. This system saves a lot of money and contributes to keeping the aforementioned cost increase down to $10 per year.
3) Waste Management will provide a once-per-year no-charge electronics waste drop-off event. It'll be held at our Public Works facility. Dane County already puts on a county-wide e-waste drop-off event early in summer, so we're thinking that ours will happen in the fall. If you can't hold on to your e-waste until one of those events, you can still pay a fee to drop it at our Public Works facility year-round or a company like File 13 will take it off your hands at a per-pound rate.
Those are the major features of the new refuse and recycling contract that will begin in December. I feel that these services and costs are a good trade off and will work well for the City of Verona's residents.
We'll still have the feature that seems to be the favorite among City of Verona residents: unlimited garbage collection. With the exception of certain regulated items (like electronics waste), you can still place however much of whatever you want at the curb and it'll get hauled away.
Three things will change:
1) The current City of Verona recommended budget calls for the refuse and recycling line item on our property tax bills to increase from $150 per year to $160. Some contractors don't even offer an unlimited rate anymore, and the ones that do need to charge more for it due to disposal cost increases. All of us on the Council seem to feel that the strong popularity of the unlimited refuse collection justifies this $10 per year increase.
2) Recycling will go to an automated every-other-week collection. Waste Management will provide each household with a 96-gallon recycling cart along with a calendar showing the dates it'll be collected. I lived in Madison when they went to this system and it seemed to work quite well once everyone got used to it. This system saves a lot of money and contributes to keeping the aforementioned cost increase down to $10 per year.
3) Waste Management will provide a once-per-year no-charge electronics waste drop-off event. It'll be held at our Public Works facility. Dane County already puts on a county-wide e-waste drop-off event early in summer, so we're thinking that ours will happen in the fall. If you can't hold on to your e-waste until one of those events, you can still pay a fee to drop it at our Public Works facility year-round or a company like File 13 will take it off your hands at a per-pound rate.
Those are the major features of the new refuse and recycling contract that will begin in December. I feel that these services and costs are a good trade off and will work well for the City of Verona's residents.
Monday, October 10, 2011
Open letter regarding Harmony Hills Lot 36
I am providing my thoughts regarding the McKenzie proposal on Harmony Hills Lot 36 in the form of an open letter to those who have provided their thoughts to me. This PDF document was E-mailed out this morning, and I'm making it available here for consideration by all.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
McKenzie Apartment Open House
John McKenzie announced at the Plan Commission meeting this week that he's having an open house at his Blackhawk Trails apartment community on Thursday night, 10/6. The meeting point will be the clubhouse, 732 Bear Claw Way, Madison starting at 7pm.
He invites anyone who has a concern about or is interested in his proposed development in Harmony Hills to come and take a look at his existing development.
It has been interesting to hear from the residents of Harmony Hills regarding the proposed McKenzie development. As I've read my E-mail and listened to the comments at both the Common Council and Plan Commission meetings in the last couple weeks, the concerns really focus around the scale of the development.
While the concerns about scale do have merit and need to be discussed with Mr. McKenzie, we - as City officials - need to avoid pushing the development out entirely. As I look at the zoning entitlements that are already on Lot 36, there is a wide variety of far less favorable developments that could end up there, which we would be powerless to object to. If we must have more apartments in our City (and we do), McKenzie's apartments are the kind that we want.
He invites anyone who has a concern about or is interested in his proposed development in Harmony Hills to come and take a look at his existing development.
It has been interesting to hear from the residents of Harmony Hills regarding the proposed McKenzie development. As I've read my E-mail and listened to the comments at both the Common Council and Plan Commission meetings in the last couple weeks, the concerns really focus around the scale of the development.
While the concerns about scale do have merit and need to be discussed with Mr. McKenzie, we - as City officials - need to avoid pushing the development out entirely. As I look at the zoning entitlements that are already on Lot 36, there is a wide variety of far less favorable developments that could end up there, which we would be powerless to object to. If we must have more apartments in our City (and we do), McKenzie's apartments are the kind that we want.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Downtown TIF clarification
I want to clarify something on the downtown TIF district purely because of how the headline in the Verona Press was written.
If you read a few paragraphs in to the article, you'll see that we're not actually borrowing $5 million. We're purely giving ourselves the flexibility to borrow money for redevelopment and improvement projects if they prove themselves worthy of it. Any actual borrowing will be on a case-by-base basis and will go through our normal budget process each year.
We're doing this because we see a few potentially valuable and strategic redevelopment projects out on the horizon. We can't talk about them publicly yet, but they're out there. They may or may not happen. If they do happen, they will help to alleviate various situations downtown that we hear about from residents and businesses alike.
As it stands today, that district will likely close out in 2016, even if the project plan amendment passes the Joint Review Board. The 2024 close-out projection is only if we were to actually borrow the entire $5 million - which I feel is unlikely.
If you read a few paragraphs in to the article, you'll see that we're not actually borrowing $5 million. We're purely giving ourselves the flexibility to borrow money for redevelopment and improvement projects if they prove themselves worthy of it. Any actual borrowing will be on a case-by-base basis and will go through our normal budget process each year.
We're doing this because we see a few potentially valuable and strategic redevelopment projects out on the horizon. We can't talk about them publicly yet, but they're out there. They may or may not happen. If they do happen, they will help to alleviate various situations downtown that we hear about from residents and businesses alike.
As it stands today, that district will likely close out in 2016, even if the project plan amendment passes the Joint Review Board. The 2024 close-out projection is only if we were to actually borrow the entire $5 million - which I feel is unlikely.
Monday, July 25, 2011
String of burglaries - lock up at night!
A fellow resident of District 4 experienced a burglary over the weekend and was informed by the Police Department that he wasn't alone.
The officer informed him that there had been at least 10 other reports of similar burglaries in the southeast portion of Verona. The suspect(s) enter through open garage doors or unlocked utility doors. They apparently rifle through the cars inside, stealing change, wallets and GPS units. They've not been known to take anything else in the garage.
How do you prevent yourself from becoming a victim? Make sure your garage (and house) doors are closed and locked! They appear to be passing over residences where they can't enter easily.
Leaving a garage unsecured is like ringing a dinner bell. These really easy burglaries seem to happen every year, and it's not just in Verona. We got hit the one night we left our garage door open when we lived in Madison.
As the fellow resident put it: "This is a good reminder that even though we live in a safe neighborhood, it is necessary to take the appropriate precautions to prevent incidents like this."
The officer informed him that there had been at least 10 other reports of similar burglaries in the southeast portion of Verona. The suspect(s) enter through open garage doors or unlocked utility doors. They apparently rifle through the cars inside, stealing change, wallets and GPS units. They've not been known to take anything else in the garage.
How do you prevent yourself from becoming a victim? Make sure your garage (and house) doors are closed and locked! They appear to be passing over residences where they can't enter easily.
Leaving a garage unsecured is like ringing a dinner bell. These really easy burglaries seem to happen every year, and it's not just in Verona. We got hit the one night we left our garage door open when we lived in Madison.
As the fellow resident put it: "This is a good reminder that even though we live in a safe neighborhood, it is necessary to take the appropriate precautions to prevent incidents like this."
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