06-24-10, Herbert Molano
on Vanguardians, The Thompsons,
and the final budget approval session
Much can be said about the claims of Lynn Myers and
her determination to address the Thompson's legal defense fund contributions
yet to be forwarded to them. I fully
support her on this endeavor. But anyone
watching the city council session must have felt that the budget was only
incidental to the real problem in
As a contributing writer to Vanguard, I find the timing and resurfacing of this
issue troublesome. Without reducing the
merit of Ms Myers' contention, having this issue come up at a time when the
budget discussion should be on everyone's mind is very unfortunate. I've left word with the Thompson's to have Ms
Myers call me to see if I can help resolve that financial transaction with
Vanguard.
But Tuesday should've been all about the budget. The four city councilmen decided on Tuesday
night to spend a huge amount of time either giving awards or taking plenty of
photo opportunities to present themselves in their most concerned-politician
behavior. They also spent a considerable
time berating Vanguard, Barry Allen on many contentions, including the issue of
the Thompson's legal fund contribution.
The real victim was transparency. Here
is a city council whose expenditures are 400 million dollars more per year than
the amounts they were spending eleven years ago. There is no question in my mind that no agenda
item except the budget should have been on the table the whole session analyzed
and finalized. Yet very little
accountability was given with regard to wasted money in employee lawsuits
against the city on sexual harassment charges, the loss of millions of dollars
the city incurred due to judgments against it. The millions of dollars in project cost
over-runs, the huge increase in pay to the same managers who were supposed to
oversee and implement sound policies but failed. When a city executive can then retire on
multi-million dollar pensions after such massive screw ups, we begin to
understand why this year-old concern with Vanguard resurfaced with a vengeance.
It appears that there is an all-out
effort to misdirect public opinion from these real issues -
1. An increase in the number of middle managers by 40% from
eleven years ago
2. An increase in the city's debt by hundreds of
millions
3. A reduction of the city's reserves by over 100
million
4. Police and Fire payroll exceeding a 100% increase from 10 years ago
5. Pay gimmicks and pay spiking to extract more money from
6. A long list of supplementary benefits that were left unchallenged due to
lack of sufficient time last Tuesday.
The list goes on. So while taxpayers are
paying among the highest electricity rates of any public utility customers in
Here is my take on it. Every June should
be accountability month. Side by side,
the city should explain the quality of life indicators and how the budget
addresses those problems. Trends, graphs
and projections should be clear, definitive, unambiguous, forthright.
Instead, the paltry audience must have left the chambers wondering what the
real purpose of Tuesday night was.
I left the night's session with a simple question posed to the council that
neither Weaver nor the other members could
answer. What is
the total police salaries and wages for this fiscal year? What was the total pension expense for the
fire department? Stunned at the
simplicity of the question and the inability of the councilmen to answer, Jim Starbird stormed out of the council chambers.
The rest of the public, instead of leaving the chambers concerned about the
future city finances, they left with a whole other topic of discussion. Misdirection could not have been executed more
effectively.
Herbert Molano