Morning Buzz — April 21, 2010

A daily digest of what’s going on in Fredericksburg, and what news from elsewhere is relevant here. Send suggestions to ebattle@freelancestar.com.

More on the budget –

Last night’s public hearing and council work session both focused on the prioritization of outside nonprofit agencies. If you’d like to see the proposals the council members still have on the table as their first vote on the budget approaches (April 27), click here. The “propositions for discussion” are still floating around, but council members talked a little about them last night. The “propositions for voting” will be voted up or down at a work session before the April 27 meeting.

A couple of folks have picked up on the line in today’s story stating that Fredericksburg has the highest per-capita costs in the region for public safety, courts and public works. This is drawn from data from the state’s auditor of public accounts. I have been working with this data recently to look at how our region’s local governments stack up statewide in terms of spending levels and tax burdens. I’ll save the tax conclusions for later, but below are the numbers behind the statements in today’s story.

Keep in mind that Fredericksburg has a much smaller population than most of its neighbors, and that as a regional hub, a lot of people from outside the city come here to entertain themselves, and sometimes involvement in the criminal justice system is a result of that entertainment. Fredericksburg is also the only locality in our region that maintains a police department in addition to a sheriff’s department. These figures include federal and state money spent in these categories, and Fredericksburg gets less state aid per capita than all but four of our region’s 13 localities.

Per-capita spending on public safety (Fredericksburg is No. 2 in the state in this category):

Per-capita spending on public works:

Per-capita spending on judicial administration (Fredericksburg is No. 3 in the state in this category):