On 3/6/03 4:15 PM, "Lisa McDonald" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I guess I'm wondering why we're not hearing about cuts in finance, > inspections, the Civil Rights Department (a totally duplicative function > that the state currently has),ITS and a shift in CDBG from small grant > programs to funding certain public service functions in targeted > neighborhoods (trust me this can be done and has been done in the past). That's a good question, but I also wonder whether we're not hearing about such cuts because they're not being proposed or because the press doesn't think anyone would care about cuts in those functions and won't buy newspapers for the privilege of reading more about cuts in finance? > Why is it the cuts are mostly in fire, police and public works (which has > been cut so much in the last eight years they squeak). I thought Chief Olson answered this question fairly well (at least for his agency). He said in the Strib that "We're [police] the biggest department with the biggest amount of money." > Is this a political ploy since they think this will make citizens complain > to the state or is it just the easiest cuts to make. Also how come this > administration (which bills itself as throwing the doors open at City Hall" > hasn't had any public hearings on what the citizens would like to see cut. > The School Board has done an excellent job of surveying their constitutents, > on just this point, in their last two budget cuts. Although I do agree that public hearings would be great right now, I don't think there's any political ploy going on here on behalf of the City. The only political ploy going on is coming from a Governor's administration that is unwilling to use the general fund budget as a basis for LGA cuts and instead wants to include revenues that were imposed on us by the State. In the case of the convention center, essentially what the governor proposes is to give us a 2 for 1 deal on the punishment: first, the state makes us pay ourselves for a facility that the state wanted and then now the state proposes to use those revenues as a basis to cut our LGA and wreck our general fund budget since we cannot use revenues from the convention center tax for anything but paying off those bonds. Anybody who doesn't think Pawlenty and Awada are out to get Minneapolis needs to wake up and smell the coffee on this fine, freshly snowed morning. Mark Snyder Windom Park TEMPORARY REMINDER: 1. Send all posts in plain-text format. 2. Cut as much of the post you're responding to as possible. ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
