Spending Money 'Like Drunken Sailors': Roseville Residents Speak on Bonding Sale

The Roseville Council voted 3-2 on Monday to approve a $17 million bond sale for the new fire station and park projects, a decision that came only after some citizens voiced their vehement opposition. 

Council members supporting the bond sale (Mayor Dan Roe and members Jeff Johnson and Bob Willmus) said the city is in dire need of the new fire station and maintaining the city parks. Dissenting votes came from Tammy McGehee and Tammy Pust, who contended that citizens should had a chance to vote on the bonding projects in a referendum.

The bonds, which will be repaid from property tax revenue, were not popular among Roseville residents, who spoke out in a public hearing before the Council's  vote.

Here’s an edited and condensed version of what some Roseville residents had to say.

Greg Ryan:

I have been overtaxed in Roseville ever since I’ve been there. I pay $10,000 a year on my house to have the city council and the mayor push forward this multi-million dollar agenda without it actually going on a ballot for the public, the taxpayers to have an opportunity to shut it down.

Four city council members and a mayor singlehandedly will be elevating my property taxes at a time the economy is weighed down. You people are boasting that you’re going to get better contracts. That’s very possible but you’re removing money that people don’t have. Our backs are up against the wall. It should be almost illegal for you guys to go ahead and endorse this whole thing here. There are people on the threshold of losing their home. It’s a gross negligence of your political and public office.

I just think that it's a gross negligence on anybody's part that decided to push this down our throats, and I would ask anybody who did this to resign.

John Torgerson:

I’m not going to ask you to resign, but I would like you to change your vote on this.

I believe the people of Roseville are not being informed enough. My property taxes last year went up 23.3 percent, [and now we can] add another 15 percent to that. We are now in the process of putting our house up for sale because of the increase in the last three or four years on property taxes, so this is putting a burden on us. I’d like to see a letter to go out to all the people in the city of Roseville that says, ‘Here’s what the numbers are, here’s what your taxes are going to go up, now are you interested in this?’

You should wait a year [to get more resident input]. That fire department could have been delayed but it was pushed through, and that fire department is the Taj Mahal of fire departments—there’s stuff that is in there that you don’t need.

This is not fiscally responsible.

Robert Deleo:

Last year we got a letter that said the city has mismanaged their water system and hadn’t done any maintenance on it for years and years, and said, ‘Here’s a 60 percent increase on your water bill.’ Now you come along and you say, ‘Our parks are deteriorating.’ That’s mismanagement of the parks. You ran out of money. Where did it go? You’re collecting taxes, you’ve got a park system that you apparently can’t afford to maintain—and you want to expand it? To me, there’s been gross mismanagement of the finances of this city and it’s getting worse all the time.

You shove $27 million of cost down our throat, and now you want to push it along even sooner, when it was supposed to be spread out over three years. We’ve got a country that’s in deep financial trouble—cities, counties—and you guys are spending money like drunken sailors.

Tim Callaghan:

We used to have three fire stations, which gave us a fairly rapid response of the fire department. Now we’re going to have one. We’re building a luxury facility for the fire department and getting reduced response.

We’re looking at a 15 percent rise in taxes this year and over the next few years we’re going to go up an additional 15 percent. When are we going to get control? When are we going to ask Roseville residents what they want with a view toward what it’s going to cost?