Earlier I had posted this thinking that nothing would be cut from the budget. Our original post titled the “City Council has failed us” was:
Not going to blame or praise anyone individually, but as a collective body they have failed us.
A budget over 600 million dollars and they can not come up with 7 million dollars in savings to keep our tax bills at the same level. Instead there is a 2.5% percent, the most that taxes can be increased, and as far as we can tell not one penny is being cut?
Flash forward.
Next year or the year after when we have no more excess tax levy capacity and taxes are at their max level, the Council will have no choice but to make cuts when the budget exceeds our collections by 5 to 10 million.
Until then they will just be a rubber stamp.
It turns out the council did cut $3,000,000 by not putting money into the what we have been referring to as the North High line item, while continuing to put $500,000 towards OPEB this year!!! Great job.
Lets go out of our way to commend:
- Lukes
- Gaffney
- Bergman
- Russell
- Carlson
- King
- Rosen
Voting against
- Petty
- Rivera
- Toomey
- Economou
At the same time, we still believe that another $4,000,000 would have been very easy to find?
For now, lets look at the glass half full and hope the City Council continues not to be a rubber stamp and takes a hard look at issues like if we should belong in the:
- golf course
- driving range
- convention center
- parking garage
- train station
- sign business.
