UPDATE
: Mayor Bill Finch submitted his election-year budget to the City Council Monday night that is expected to produce a minimal or no tax increase. Link to mayor’s proposed spending plan here.
Hey, members of the legislative body don’t want to raise taxes in an election year, do they? In fact, council members have done little to the mayor’s proposed budgets since his first in 2008. And now that Bob Curwen, long-time council budget co-chair, works at the will of the mayor, do ya think he’ll do anything to rock the boat? Not a chance. (Not that he did before.)
The council’s Budget and Appropriations Committee has scheduled its first meeting for Tuesday (tonight) 6 p.m. in the Wheeler Room of City Hall. It also has a meeting scheduled for Wednesday 6 p.m. in the Wheeler Room. The council’s budget committee will spend the next six weeks reviewing and acting on various department budgets before voting on the budget May 9. It then goes to the full council for a vote, back to the mayor for possible veto action, before the council sets the final budget year mil rate in June.
Now how did they accomplish a no-tax-increase budget? Hopefully not with another union concession deficit.
I think they did it with smoke and mirrors …
You could double the union concessions and still be in the red.
From the birth city of CitiStat to the city that adopted it:
www .baltimorecity.gov/OfficeoftheMayor/NewsPressReleases/tabid/66/ID/1048/Mayor_Rawlings-Blake_Finance_Dept_Release_FY2012_Preliminary_Budget.aspx
Did the city pensions get funded this year or is another $20 million still missing?
Last year’s budget hearings were a joke, the budget committee held hearings and did not cut one department’s budget. Curwen and company did not do one damned thing. In fact Curwen told me he got the budget with an $8 million deficit and F the mayor he sent it back with an $8 million deficit. Well we see what happened, Curwen got a job.
This year he will do the same thing and probably will get a bonus and be anointed the savior of Bridgeport.
The council last year voted in a budget with an $8 million deficit. Is there any hope they will do anything different this year? NO.
I want to know how the council members who voted for last year’s budget justify their vote. Don’t they have any shame at all? Is there anyone on the council besides Walsh who gives a shit about Bridgeport? When are the members of the council going to do something to help Bridgeport and its residents? I can tell you voting for a deficit-laden budget is not the answer. When does the council stop thinking of themselves and their city jobs and start doing what they were elected to do? I know the answer is not in my lifetime. Shame on them.
Isn’t it amazing? Today is the day of the first budget hearing and yet no published version of the proposed budget is posted on the city’s web site. I guess they don’t want it looked at by any of the citizens of Bridgeport. I will be at the hearing tonight and every night they have a hearing. Nothing like watching your city government in action or should I say nothing like watching your city government building a lie. This is going to be great watching the council members on the budget committee sitting nodding off.
OK, it’s BUDGET TIME and tc, the good news is the budget package for 2011-12 is on the City site. Go to City of Bridgeport and look for the link on the left column at the bottom.
When you see the Table of Contents you can search out those sections you wish to explore further and perhaps print out sections for further review. I suggest the pages of the Budget Summary, from Budget and Accounting Policies to Bridgeport in Context are worth reading before attempting to make sense of the parts of the Budget that may interest you.
Next step is to refer to the Bridgeport Home Page and at the top click on City Clerk. On the left side of that page you can link with Council Committee Agenda/Minutes. Clicking on Budget and Appropriations will provide you with the Hearing Schedule for this year.
It starts tonight at 6:00 PM for Budget Overview-Revenue in the Wheeler Rooms. (I can’t be there but expect that one or more BOB supporters (Budget Overview Bridgeport 2011) will be present to listen, observe and learn. Tomorrow night at 6:00 PM in the Wheeler Rooms is Budget Overview for Expenditures/Capital Discussion. Department hearings begin next Monday April 11 at 7:00 PM.
From the serious above to the incongruous last night. Shortly after 7:30 PM when the Council returned from caucus to the public they voted unanimously to move the Budget document from the Mayor and OPM to Budget and Appropriations Committee. A short time later (the UCONN game being on the mind of the Mayor and others) another unanimous motion passed: it was a motion in support of Wisconsin workers who are members of unions. And the public was provided another lesson regarding “talking the talk” and “walking the walk!” The Budgets approved for the past two years have neglected to fund $tens of millions promised after negotiation to former and/or current vested Union members. Is there any sense among the group that talk is cheap, but budgets and pensions are about money? And money is expensive when you talk about funding pension plans as routine annual expenses. (And deferred retirement plan contributions are not budget cuts. But if you don’t mention pension contribution deferrals in your Mayoral cover letter, who is the wiser? And what is the increased expense down the road for the deferral?)
Which method of dealing with budget problems do you support: the Wisconsin Open? or the Bridgeport Confidential?
The Mayor was also proud of CitiStat results for 311 that has had 40,000 calls. No specifics on what efficiencies grew from that activity nor what targeted areas revealed necessary changes.
I cannot find the pension funding. Do you have any idea?
No, I was hoping BEACON2 did.
Dear BEACON2,
In response to your post the other day. Wandering or Walking it’s all the same. It’s part of a passion for excellence that is absent in Bridgeport.
Passion for Excellence–Enterprise Media Training Videos
ln this program, Tom Peters (co-author of In Search of Excellence with Bob Waterman, A … Before being elected Governor of Maryland, William Donald Schaefer led a 15 year … MBWA (Managing By Wandering Around) …
www .enterprisemedia.com/product/00012/passion_excellence_tom_peters.html
The one upside to the moral bankruptcy of Bill Finch and the majority of the City Council is this: The Tea Party saw Bridgeport as a lost cause. No personal appearances by Sarah Palin, and thank Christ for that!
For those interested, the proposed budget is on line on the OPM web pages.
There appears to be a slight problem with the first few pages but starting with Central Grants it appears the pages are properly loaded.
Happy reading!!!
And for those you had asked, last year I proposed to the B & A Committee scrapping the funding for CitiStat under the premise that as long as we were renegotiating union contracts which might result in city concessions about new layoffs or job eliminations it seemed like a very pricey department simply tracking citizen questions and complaints.
I also suggested scrapping about half of the highly paid executives in the Planning and Economic Development Department under the premise that no development is taking place in the city anyhow, why incur the big labor costs?
The B & A Committee took it under advisement and quickly reject the suggestion.
I thing I was looking at around $1 million savings for the city.
The city should put any and all development deals out for an open listing type process to commercial realtors around the country. Bring a deal to Bridgeport and you get a commission with a built-in residual 3-year declining commission fee schedule. I would love to pay out a million a year in commissions.
Dump Op-Ed!
Park Adm. Appropriations Suppl.
Senior Checkpoint Attendant $89,432?
“Raise your glass to the hard working people
Let’s drink to the uncounted heads
Let’s think of the wavering millions
Who need leaders but get gamblers instead
“Spare a thought for the stay-at-home voter
His empty eyes gaze at strange beauty shows
And a parade of the gray-suited grafters
A choice of cancer or polio …”
Kid, when will OIB’s favorite guitar slinger pen an ode to city politics?
When shrimp learn to whistle …
BALANCED BUDGET
The Charter of the City of Bridgeport mandates a balanced budget. For the purposes of meeting this requirement, each year a budget is adopted in which the projected expenditures are equal to the projected revenues.
Will the members of the budget committee and members of the council please read the above passage from the charter? This states you all violated the charter when you passed last year’s budget that had a built-in $8 million deficit.