Mayor Ballard's budget passed the City-County Council tonight with many amendments proposed, but all save one defeated. The budget is the same as the Mayor first introduced with only one significant change - the change the Fraternal Order of Police wanted.
There will be layoffs representing at least $700,000 in salaries in the Parks Department (but that figure might grow to $1.4 M in salary-positions) and two positions in the Telecom Services area will be eliminated for political reasons. Meanwhile, the budget puts $16M into a rainy day fund and spends an additional $49M in new revenues over what was budgeted for 2009. The 2010 budget is 5.5% larger than the 2009 budget and we are cutting jobs.
I continue to maintain that you can tell what the Mayor's priorities are by what he chooses to spent our money on.
More detail to come.
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The Pollyanna Approach
2 hours ago
1 comment:
Pat, I 'm glad you characterized that TVSA move for what it is - political, or more accurately, personal. T
he notion that this is going to save money is ludicrous. We're losing our local telecom regulator which is where the regulatory effort starts. He was a proponent of fair regulation and that telecoms pay for the use of public rights of way, like they do in other cities. A certain Ballard insider, paid for by both taxpayers and AT&T, did not like the fact that Maultra insisted on doing his job...which would have resulted in AT&T paying more. It's disgraceful that so many Repubicans and Democrats went along with this move which drips of a conflict of interest. I doubt though this is the last we've heard of this.
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