I hope Walt will forgive my lack of clarity. I wasn't trying to explain all of the levy request, just point out that not all costs are subject to rise only at inflationary rates. I'm sure there may be other examples, such as energy costs (good reason to support sustainability and energy-efficiency initiatives in public buildings!).
I agree that there's got to be other things going on to require this kind of increase - especially since the city levy is actually going to be higher than the touted 8% cap. I hope our mayor or an esteemed council member might see fit to share with us what those would be. Mark Snyder Windom Park (59A) [EMAIL PROTECTED] On 7/15/02 10:56 PM, "Walt Cygan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Mark Snyder wrote: >> Inflation may be down to a percent or two, but things like >> health care premiums continue to rise at double-digit levels >> each year. > > The problem with this logic is that even though health care costs > continue to rise in ridiculous leaps, the percentage that health care > premiums make up of an overall budget is not large enough to translate > into double-digit increases for the overall budget. > > If 20% of an organization's budget were health care costs (which is not > realistic) and those costs went up by 20%, that would require a 4% > increase in budget. > > Clearly something has to be done about these increases in health care, > but to use that as an excuse to sock the taxpayers for more and more > money is not credible. > > I'm not a knee-jerk conservative who opposes all taxation, but I would > hope that every public servant would realize that a dollar taken from > families in taxes is a dollar that can't be spent for groceries or > housing or education. > > Walt Cygan > Keewaydin _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
