The Finance and Government Operations Commission has a big job at its meeting tonight (7PM, Room 208, City Hall). Its agenda includes nearly $500k of appropriation, grant and transfer requests, and discussion of several plans that could have significant effects on our city.Finance
F&G will consider appropriation requests from the Registrar of Voters, the Fire Department, the Library, and the Police. The Board of Education will ask for permission to use money it did not spend in the last fiscal year to install air conditioning in schools.
The Commission will also discuss a new State Motor Vehicle Tax legislation, the recent Emergency State budget reduction, and hold preliminary discussions on the effect of a possible tax on the city because of its generous health insurance.
Government Operations
The Commission will discuss the Riverfront Master Plan RFP. The Master Plan approach to Riverfront planning was suggested by Molly Salafia and other Republicans, when in May they opposed changes to the Zoning Regulations relating to the river.
Finally, the Commission will discuss a proposed amendment to the ordinances regulating the operations of Planning and Zoning. This would be a "Public Education Budget Impact Statement". Council member Tom Serra, Chair of Finance and Government Operations, said that this was an initiative of Council member David Bauer. Serra said the idea was to collect information on housing that would help in planning future budgets.
All the appropriations on the agenda should have already been included in this years fiscal budget, or been part of the CNR and Capitol budgets which the City has ceased to fund.
ReplyDeleteYou can add these appropriations to the fiscal budget and forget about the zero tax increase. This is nothing but an end around play which has been going on for the past four years.
What's the old saying? "Poor planning on your part, does not constitute an emergency on my (taxpayers) part!" Time to get Dan Drew out of office!