On 9/12/05 6:41 PM, "wmmarks" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > You have a lotta damn nerve accusing anyone of whining. It's not about > balancing the budget, it's about upon whom the budget is balanced and > who is served by the way in which it was balanced and who was > disadvantaged. A mayor who slices and dices the police budget to the > point where the Chief of Police is saying he needs another 100 people to > do the work of the police department is not working for the city as a > whole.
What grinds my grits is when people continue to repeat stuff they know is false. As has been pointed out ad nauseam, most recently by me, not even a week ago, the mayor did NOT "slice and dice" the police budget. I repeat from my post on September 8th: "Looking below, you'll see that in the first year of [Rybak's] administration, the police budget increased by $4 million over the last year of the SSB administration (2001). Then you'll notice that while nearly all the other city departments were getting slashed over the following couple of years, the police budget stayed virtually the same. Then when things started to get better, the police budget got another $3 million increase. 2001: $95,286,294 2002: $99,551,497 2003: $99,448,921 2004: $99,487,569 2005: $102,481,580 And the 2006 proposed budget has yet another increase slated for the police department, which will go up to $116 million. Again, those are the facts." Now, one thing I've heard is that a big problem with the police budget is skyrocketing rates for health insurance coverage. Reportedly, they rose 18% last year and are slated to rise 19% this year. What do you Rybak critics suggest he do about this problem that is wreaking havoc on local government budgets across the nation? What plans do his opponent(s) have for addressing it? I'm pretty sure it's the same big fat nothing that we've seen so far for how we're going to hire all these extra cops and all this other stuff the Rybak critics want. Secondly, in regards to the latest foolishness from Mr. Delmonico, I've heard that he was initially supportive of the addition 71 police officers being brought in until Mayor Rybak refused to also agree to a fat pay increase that would have screwed that up and not allowed as many cops to be hired. Didn't the cops just get a pay increase above and beyond the 2% cap that all the other city employees were held to? As a state employee, I'm actually slated to get a 2% raise this year after going three years with my salary being frozen. While I was not happy about that, I recognized the need to sacrifice in light of the overall crappy budget situation the state was in. Too bad the Minneapolis Police Federation, or at least Mr. Delmonico, aren't capable of being team players like virtually every other public employee at the city, county and state level has had to be. Mark Snyder Windom Park REMINDERS: 1. Be civil! Please read the NEW RULES at http://www.e-democracy.org/rules. If you think a member is in violation, contact the list manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED] before continuing it on the list. 2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. For state and national discussions see: http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html For external forums, see: http://e-democracy.org/mninteract ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:mpls@mnforum.org Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
