HomeMy WebLinkAbout06-20-24 Public Comment - H. Happel - Fwd_ Proposed 2024-25 Biennium BudgetFrom:Henry Happel
To:Bozeman Public Comment
Subject:[EXTERNAL]Fwd: Proposed 2024-25 Biennium Budget
Date:Wednesday, June 19, 2024 8:36:28 AM
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I have received push back from the Frontier Institute to my comment posted on June 17. I
think out of fairness I should provide a copy of my email correspondence with the FrontierInstitute CEO. It should be read from the bottom up.
Henry Happel
Begin forwarded message:
From: Kendall Cotton <kcotton@frontierinstitute.org>
Subject: Re: Proposed 2024-25 Biennium Budget
Date: June 19, 2024 at 6:03:13 AM MDTTo: Henry Happel <henryhhappel@gmail.com>
Thanks for the feedback Henry, you make a good point about labeling and we'lldefinitely do better on future reports. Widely variable government growth
between jurisdictions is very problematic from a taxpayer's perspective, so werecommend that all Montana governments, state and local, limit the growth of
their budgets to no more than the growth of state population growth + inflation.Consider: If local governments in high growth, high wage counties grow their
budgets substantially faster than other areas of the state, the heightened burden ontaxpayers creates a huge barrier to entry for people in lower growth, lower wage
counties to move there to take advantage of greater opportunities. This hindersincome mobility, productivity, and wage growth for existing Montana residents,
as well as stifles the economic potential of our important high growth areas.Limiting the growth of all government budgets to a statewide metric provides
taxpayers with consistent and transparent expectations about the growing burdenof government statewide instead of a piecemeal approach with differing
population growth rates for every locality.
On Tue, Jun 18, 2024 at 3:25 PM Henry Happel <henryhhappel@gmail.com>wrote:
Hi Kendall—
Thanks for getting back to me. Three things:
1. I think comparing budget increases to the sum of population increases andinflation (or perhaps median income) is a useful metric.
2. The labeling in the Real Local Budgets report is poor; figure 20 and similar
figures for other communities are particularly poor.
3. It looks like what the report has done is utilize local figures for budgets butstate figures for population and inflation. That’s probably unfair for many
Montana towns; it is definitely unfair for Bozeman which has seen big increasesin population, inflation, and average wages since 2016 over and above state
averages.
Henry Happel
On Jun 17, 2024, at 6:20 PM, Kendall Cotton<kcotton@frontierinstitute.org> wrote:
Hi Henry, you are incorrect. The 5.59% metric you reference is theaverage population + inflation for those years. Figure 20 depictsthe average budget growth compared to the average growth of
population + inflation for the given time period. You can doublecheck this by looking at the actual year-by-year population +
inflation trendline we show in Figure 18, which depicts a 25%population + inflation increase between FY 2020-23.
We utilized the federal reserve economic data for this report, which
you are free to check out for yourself: inflation: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=H9v0
population: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MTPOP
One last response: the report of ours you sent is for fiscal year 24,not calendar year. The current fiscal year budget that Bozeman is
proposing is for FY 25 and we have not yet released an updatereport for this fiscal year. Be sure to sign up for our newsletter to be
notified when that goes live!
Thanks for reading our work and hopefully you find it useful asyou engage with the city budget process.
- Kendall
On Mon, Jun 17, 2024 at 4:58 PM Henry Happel
<henryhhappel@gmail.com> wrote:
Begin forwarded message:
From: Henry Happel
<henryhhappel@gmail.com>
Subject: Proposed 2024-25 Biennium Budget
Date: June 17, 2024 at 12:34:09 PM MDT
To: "comments@bozeman.net"
<comments@Bozeman.net>
Dear Commissioners—
I don't want to offer an opinion at this point as towhether the City's proposed Biennium Budget is
what is best for the citizens of Bozeman. However,there appears to be some highly inaccurate
information circulating out there coming from atleast one influential third party, information unfairly
critical of the size of the proposed budget.
Attached is a report from the Frontier Instituteentitled “2024 Real Local Budgets.” Figure 20 of
the report on page 7 states that for the period 2019-2023 population growth plus inflation in Bozeman
was 5.59% .
A report the City received from Economic &Planning Systems (copy also attached), a well-
regarded compiler of statistical information, showspopulation growth in Bozeman for the period
2020-2023 of over 10%. See Table 1 on page 2 ofthe report. On top of that, the CPI was up over 9%
during this period. Thus population growth plusinflation in the period 2020-2023 must have been
over 19%. The 5.59% cited by the Frontier Institutelooks to be wildly off the mark.
Sincerely,
Henry HappelBozeman resident
--
Kendall Cotton
CEO - Frontier Institute
Cell: (406)239-5093
frontierinstitute.org
--
Kendall Cotton
CEO - Frontier Institute
Cell: (406)239-5093
frontierinstitute.org