Mayor Joe Ganim has trotted out a whole bunch of goodies earmarked in a five-year capital plan worth some $178 million that covers schools, police, sidewalks, parks and neighborhood gateways. A prior story covered some of the broad strokes in the city’s proposal to borrow to implement improvements. See all the specifics here,
Ganim’s plan will be submitted to the Budget and Appropriations Committee at Monday night’s special meeting of the City Council.
Also on the agenda as an addendum is a “Proposed Amendment to the Municipal Code of Ordinances, Title 2 Administration and Personnel, amend to add New Chapter 2.125 – Commission and Office of Governmental Accountability, referred to Ordinance Committee”. The office, if approved, will be supervised by retired FBI agent Ed Adams, a mayoral staffer who investigated Ganim during JG1.
Adams’ public support of Ganim during his comeback bid last year helped to insulate Ganim from attacks about his past. Skeptics wonder if Adams is on the payroll as window dressing. Or will this proposal lead to reforms with the city’s Ethics Commission that has largely served as a toothless tiger? Also, how will this proposed office differ from the Ethics Commission?
The administration plans to roll out details in the next week.
This WHOLE thing has to be slowed down. As I mentioned in another post, Ganim has not submitted his first budget, the reval process and mil rate have not been established. This is a major crazy spending spree that will give the Ganim administration $180 million to play with immediately. This is downright SCARY.
And I am very suspicious some of this money will be used to “artificially” keep down property taxes making Ganim and Flatto look like the Second Coming. Another person mentioned the Gaudett Heist as the height of fiscal irresponsibility. I submit this crazy spend and borrow plan as truly the height of fiscal irresponsibility.
Relax Frank, it’s all a Joe Ganim prank.
www .youtube.com/watch?v=oon0YtjIGog
i feel like it’s Halloween. Trick or Treat.
1) Read (or review) the Charter, with special attention to the subject of budgets, operating and capital.
2) Recognize the Finch administration also presented Capital budgets for years, with far less detail for the taxpayers. How much the City Council received, understood, or questioned is a fair subject to study.
3) There is enough detail in this report for the really interested folks out there to say, what is the current status of projects and approvals from the past five years? Who is monitoring the projects? Are they coming in on budget and ahead of time or over budget and incomplete beyond deadlines?
4) Moving Chief Gaudett from his present position to another as has been presented to the Council has an expense of $125,000 per year. But so does allowing Office of Emergency Services to operate each year approximately 10% over their budget (over $5 Million) without public review of the reasons, the measures taken or study of alternatives.
5) There are far bigger fiscal forces in play here and covered by the CAFR that definitively shows what happens when long-term promises (pensions) are moved (from out there in space where no one is looking at their effect, short term or long term) onto the City balance sheet and increase our LIABILITIES so today they exceed our ASSETS, wiping out any sense of NET WORTH. How do you remedy that, City Council?? That’s a problem that has been growing every year and it is one that Moody’s, S&P and Fitch rating services are only too aware of. Why can’t the City Council get on the same page??
Time will tell.
Ganim for Governor!