Mayor Bill Finch has jammed the brakes on city take-home vehicles.
I haven’t seen a mayor other than Joe Ganim achieve this much mileage stripping away the city fleet from city employees that don’t need them.
Finch, in fact, has taken a major step beyond Joe who pounced on the issue during the 1991 mayoral campaign after then-Mayor Mary Moran had purchased a new Park Avenue even while she claimed the city was so broke as to necessitate a federal bankruptcy filing.
Joe promised during the campaign to auction the vehicle and go back to the hand-me-down cars past mayors had received from the Board of Ed Nutrition Department. Joe auctioned the vehicle as promised, but a few years later as city finances turned around and he had a couple of no-tax-increase budgets in his pocket Joe went car crazy. Seemed like he had a new car each year.
The Finch model is the type of thing that builds lots of goodwill with the public. Add all of the other cost-cutting measures the mayor has implemented and now he has something to build on in the face of a rotten economy.
Finch appears to be more self-assured on the job and showing serious improvement from the months after he assumed office. Seems like he has both hands on the steering wheel, shaky as the wheel is in this economic environment. And the mayor isn’t afraid to leverage a threatened state takeover of city finances to achieve the concessions he seeks to close a budget deficit.
It’s as if he’s placing the burden of a state takeover at the feet of any union or department that doesn’t cough up what he needs to get within range of closing the gap. The latest example of this is the Board of Education coming up $5 million short of the $7 million the mayor wants to squeeze out of the city’s single largest agency.
The mayor says it’s a a start, but not nearly enough. And, oh by the way, if you don’t cough up what I need the state’s commando operation will crash down on the city. Get the airbags ready!
See Finch news release below:
City Reduces Take-Home Vehicle Fleet by 43%
Surplus cars to be auctioned
BRIDGEPORT, CT (Jan. 15, 2009) – Mayor Bill Finch today announced that the city reduced its vehicle fleet by more than 43 percent since he has taken office, eliminating many take-home cars and auctioning surplus vehicles. By fiscal year 2009-2010, the city intends to limit its take-home vehicle fleet to only those employees who are on call 24/7. There are now 35 fewer take-home cars for City of Bridgeport employees.
“One of my goals as mayor is to reduce the size of the city vehicle fleet. Shedding the city of older, inefficient vehicles, and reducing the number of cars that employees use around-the-clock, effectively having the city pay for their transportation to and from home, will save the city approximately $150,000 a year in taxes, fees and upkeep,” said Mayor Finch. “This 43-percent reduction is a huge step toward achieving my goal to bring greater efficiency and lower costs to city government. This is but one cost-saving measure among many that we have enacted, and will continue to enact, in an effort to rein in our expenses.”
The city has nearly 400 vehicles – mostly service vehicles in the police, fire and public works department. Take-home vehicles have been the subject of collective bargaining agreements over the years. The recent round of negotiations, beginning with the city’s police department and other city unions, has led to the eventual reduction of take-home vehicle cars and privileges.
Finch continued, “When I took office, the city had 82 take-home vehicles assigned to city employees. Today, that number has dropped to 47, assigned only to employees who are on-call 24/7. The vast majority of these employees are assigned to police and fire personnel.”
The city plans to auction off two groups of vehicles in March and April. Also, as a part of the Mayor’s new policy, there will be no additional take-home cars purchased by the City of Bridgeport. The Mayor will continue to reduce the size of the city’s vehicle fleet throughout the course of his administration.
In addition to reducing the number of take-home cars and auctioning city vehicles, other major Finch administration cost-saving measures include: elimination of 222 positions; more than $2.3 million in cost-savings through union concessions, e.g.: furloughs, zero-percent pay increases and other givebacks; trimming departmental budgets by 10 to 20 percent across the board; cutting police overtime budget; reinstituting the Bootfinder program to collect more than $500,000 in delinquent car taxes; undertaking a health care enrollment audit; voluntary furloughs taken by nearly 200 employees, including all non-union employees; imposition of a travel ban, and sale of city-owned surplus buildings, such as the former Mechanics & Farmers bank building.
I have been on the mayor’s case over a lot of things but I have to say that he has made a good move in restricting the use of city cars. I hope he continues to work towards reducing the fleet even more. Well done.
Hate to be a skeptic but I’m one of those people that has to see it to believe it. In the interest of full disclosure, show us the list of who lost their cars and who kept their cars. If Sherwood, Nunn and Feeney gave up their take-home cars then I will be shocked and dismayed and totally change my opinion of Sir Finch.
And please dispell the rumor that PF switched the plates on certain cars so that they couldn’t be identified as city vehicles. Say it ain’t so Bill.
I agree with Bruce, publish the list of who lost their take-home cars and a list of who still has one … seeing is believing …
Kudos … Mr. Finch … balance the budget and save this city dammmnit!!! Make it great once again.
The city vehicle crackdown is definitely a good thing. Although I’ve seen this said before, and really, no one really lost the cars. It was all fluff talk. Let us see now if Feeney, Sherwood, and others actually give back their cars. As of today, they have not. Actually, if they were REAL PUBLIC SERVANTS, they would have given up the cars long ago as a matter of ethical standards, as they all make over $100 grand and can certainly afford to drive their own cars to and from work. Bridgeport is a poor city, not a golden egg. The REAL PUBLIC SERVANTS, making $40 grand and below, are being asked to give up so much more than they can afford, and still pay their bills, mortgages, car payments (that they drive at their own expense to and from work), and yet, in all this time, and while all this union bashing is going on … NOT ONE SINGLE HIGHLY PAID OUT-OF-TOWN EXECUTIVE has chosen to give back their car voluntarily. I find that an insult to the taxpayers of the city of Bridgeport. You Bridgeport taxpayers need to WAKE UP and DEMAND better government. I notice the city council meeting has been cancelled for lack of quorum. That has NEVER happened before. Who the heck have you people elected that they are not even interested in attending their own meetings? The layoffs have taken away from the hard-working taxpayers the best, brightest and most dedicated civil servants. Prepare for really inexperienced assistance for your tax dollars. Because they could not afford to give back what the city demands, the best public employees have gone out the door. Anyone should know that the NAGE workers are the lowest-paid hard working employees. But thank goodness we have inexperienced greeters, CitiStat, highly expensive GPS Tracking systems and a myriad of other fluffy positions created by this admin. Yet there is no one left to do the real work. This should certainly straighten this mess out. Or at the very least, teach those LEACHES ON THE CITY NAGE EMPLOYEES A LESSON. After all, they get SO MANY BENEFITS for their years of dedication.
John Ramos is such a cunt. He is on a crusade to save all of his Hartford Cronies. All Ramos does is use the poor children of the city of Bridgeport as a body shield on a jihad against the Finch administration and its taxpayers. He should be ashamed of himself. I don’t know any profession from Pro Baseball to Prostitution where you get rewarded if your performance goes down the tubes.
In baseball if you have piss-poor numbers and can’t play you end up on the Bluefish.
In prostitution if your ho doesn’t bring home the bacon you smack the living daylights out of her.
Inside Girl- That “Greeter” at Lyon Terrace has done more work than you have done in the city for however long you have been employed.
Prostitution??? How about the city council members who feel it is so much more important to attend the Obama swearing in that they will not get within 5 miles of, than to attend their own sinking city council meeting. You people have the most useless city council ever, and what they are allowing this administration to do to your city you should be appalled at. You do not have a majority of COUNCIL MEMBERS WHO ARE in it for the right reasons. When you ever get one … You don’t endorse them … those are the ones you should send up to Hartford and higher levels … NO … in Bridgeport, you send up people you would like to get rid of on a city level. You all are retarded.
Inside Girl- If you don’t like it get on Rte 8 and go back to Monroe or wherever you live. The City Council is useless but it’s not because of the inauguration. Is there any update on the sewer deal? From what I hear Mario Presto and Slob Curwen are upset that Bridgeport isn’t getting any money on a long-term basis from Trumbull and Monroe. If I am not mistaken you have had so many projects on the borders that the city hasn’t gotten a red cent i.e. the Trumbull Mall. All of those projects were under the watch of Mario. You know what they say if you keep doing the same things over and expect the same result you know what that is.
Dewars … me going down Route 8 doesn’t help matters any. I’m just saying what I feel is, that is all.
A bad idea is for everyone who does not like what is going on is to get themselves back to wherever … we all just want Bridgeporters to get up and speak for themselves, is all … It is a beautiful and wonderful city, and you have a bunch of bozos leading the way, and you are apparently one of them, if you can be so non-democratic to say that if I don’t like what is going on I should just get on the highway and go away.
Your comment to me indicates if you don’t like it get out. Is that really a good solution? You must be one of THEM and very satisfied with the tax rate and services that Bridgeporters are getting. By the way, your facts are wrong about Mario and Curwen.
*** The city car fleet problem has been talked about here on OIB for quite some time now. There’s not too much left on the city side as far as cuts are concerned other than crony jobs, rented or leased properties, and small secret pots of gold hidden in unknown places for trips & support services like the Mayor is going on, etc. The rest of the mismanaged “$” is on the B.O.E side. And they’ll always use the kids as shields to say no & ask for more money come budget time. So the Mayor will have to get their projected savings come budget time for the next fiscal year! *** Where’s that leave the city with increased bogus property re-vals & projected mil-rate increases come July 1st. ’09? *** State Financial Review Board, that’s where. ***
FAITH MUST PRECEDE KNOWLEDGE–there are no exceptions. Those words are in response to a post on this page (wink).
The Congress Street Bridge: it’s broke, let’s fix it.
KUDOS to Mayor Finch who continues to make the tough, unpopular but necessary changes needed to balance Bridgeport’s budget. He’s the only person standing between The Park City and the Financial Review Board. He’s got a strategy for Hartford and Washington.
Good Work Mayor Finch!
I’d be more impressed if Wood, Feeney, Nunn, Sherwood and another staff member stood on the Annex steps and handed over the keys. Let the press take a picture of that and then I will say good for Finch.
Also is it true that the City is paying all the expenses of his staff to go to the inauguration? Please tell me that isn’t true with all those people being laid off. That would truly be a sick thing to do. I don’t think the City should pay for Finch to go either.
FORECLOSURE HEAT MAP, red equals DANGER ZONE
(Click the map for a larger view.)
RED = foreclosures; I see a lot of RED in Connecticut, paging Gov. Rell.
Local Eyes: Impressive map and we all know that the housing market is in trouble. What do you want Gov. Rell to do, bail out the people in foreclosure? The government is trying to do that to some degree with 1 Trillion dollars. Were you aware that over 50% of the people that had their mortgages adjusted and received foreclosure help went into foreclosure a second time?
Contrary to what Senator Dodd and Representative Frank believe not all people can afford or should have their own houses. They just can’t afford them.
So far, all the bailout money has gone to the same institutions that caused the whole credit mess. The Good Guys get burned by default.
Since the caveman, WHAT THIS WORLD NEEDS is more successful people. During the ’30s people were dependent on companies for employment. Today, we’re hardened by experience. Never before have we had a more educated and tooled population. Yet, The USA invented the internet and now others leapfrog us.
It will be interesting to see Council members expense reports for stipends. Will it be reflective of the cost to attend the inaugural?
The Oracle of Omaha Steaks.
Taxpayers Given Golden Shower!!!
Donovan gives Amann a Golden Handshake with $120k per year senior advisor position. Talk about eating with two forks.
I can say for a 100% fact that 2 people with tickets (who are Bpt politicians) might not be able to go as they have to pay for themselves and cannot get an affordable room and another who is a high-ranking Bpt official is paying for him/herself and staying with friends in a tiny one-bedroom apt on the floor … so I think a lot of the criticsm of the BPT delegation is false and unfounded.
*** Bpts Finest- They should have made plans long ago, like back in Sept. ’08 if headed to DC. Everyone knows all traffic stops, closes, blocked, etc. @ 8:am on the 20th in or out of the city, except security okayed emergency vehicles. And all the hotels, motels in & just outside DC were double in price and booked since Labor Day! The average Joe would have to pay their way; however the city council has a $9,000. a year stipend that starts in the month of Dec. for any business-related events, etc. So does the Mayor’s business-related city credit card, only it’s for much more “$”. This would be more of a historical political type trip which if @ the right place & time, a possible meet & greet with the right people could be beneficial to Bpt. in time! One never knows when a ray of sunshine could peek through the dark clouds of a dismal sky, even in Bpt.? *** Example, back in the late spring of ’08, Finch seeing a certain State Rep. that was wearing an Obama button on his lapel, stated Obama could never beat Hillary ’cause America was not ready for a Black President! A perfect example how you never know what can happen in life, so it pays to be prepared. ***
The city is a Joke. Finch is laying people off on one end and letting in his buddies in through the back door. I mean come on people. It’s so obvious that he is pocketing money on the side while his wife sits at the bar flirting with younger men. The lady has been seen on numerous occasions driving around in a car registered to the city of Bridgeport. Larry Osborne drives around in a city vehicle for what? The guy is carrying his ninja turtle bike in the back of it! I just can’t believe it. I am so glad my municipality is in good standing.