How would you spend $193 million?
The City of Fullerton’s Proposed Budget is out and tonight your elected Council will vote to approve it.
$172.6 million represents the “total appropriations” planned for FY2011-12 for the City of Fullerton and the balance, $20.4 million, is what the Redevelopment Agency plans to spend for the same period.
The biennial budget also includes a rough budget for FY2012-13 with $183.2 million in projected additional spending.
If the City had the money to spend, I could see a favorable vote by Council members, however, the 2-year budget falls $8 million short of being balanced.
Unfortunately, this budget is based on the premise that city employees will negotiate and accept a cut in benefits in order to help balance the revenue short-fall or over-extended expenditures depending on your point of view.
5 Council members elected by you to control $193,000,000 and in the end, we get about $4,043,000 to repave our streets and $1,600,000 to fix our water system…
With only 3% of our budget being invested in our streets and water system, its no wonder our water rates will be going up.
Free booze sounds pretty good
Our streets are going to hell, but my pension is doing just fine!
How much are we giving to the Chamber of Commerce?
The proposed budget does not itemize various memberships.
$395,050 is the proposed budget total for the City Council which includes “membership in various local, state, and regional groups” , salaries, and benefits.
$202,651 is for salaries and benefits while the remaining $192,399 is earmarked for “maintenance & support”.
The Council’s budget includes 1 administrative aid.
I’m not sure it’s a membership, technically. I think the city had s contract with the Chamber. (And why don’t they provide an itemized budget anyway?).
Those are good questions for tonight’s meeting.
which starts at 6:30PM in the Council Chambers (303 W. Commonwealth Ave.).
If the City operates like the OCWD (http://gregsebourn.blogspot.com/2011/06/water-bills-where-does-your-money-g.html), then they pay for several memberships to a multitude of lobbying and special-interest groups.
Forgot to mention…at least OCWD itemizes their memberships, as embarrassing as many of them may be.
Another bitter wanna-be. in 1997.
About Greg Sebourn:
Greg graduated from the Fullerton College Police Academy. While interviewing and testing with various law enforcement agencies, he fell into a new career path that proved to be very rewarding: land surveying. Greg quickly immersed himself in the rich history of land surveying.
When all else fails stand in a road and hold sticks. It’s close to living that dream.
If the City spent more money on roads..more money would be spent on surveying roads very shallow self promotion.
BTS
You must have dug deep for that. A land surveyor lobbying for more road work in a town renown for its poor roads is much less nefarious than ex-cops on city councils spiking pensions and benefits.
I call BS on BTS
Maybe if a chiropractor or an accident attorney argued against better roads I’d see some kind of conspiracy. Everyone who doesn’t want the roads fixed clap your hands…
This is very funny. I too read this and thought he must have been an extremely shitty candidate to not get hired at any of the many police agencies in the state. I also think that he does blog to him himself or is that floggin himself? He can’t let it go and wants to be on council sooooooooo bad. You lost the citizens rejected you big time so move on to your rewarding land surveying career choice wanna-be
So, Samir, what do you think about the city budget?
Wasn’t Nelson a personal injury attorney? He probably wants the roads to stay in bad shape. More accidents you know.
Our elderly council members need the bumps to keep them awake long enough to get to city hall. The potholes help them to also drive by Braille.
The reason the city has to pay for memberships is so it has lobby support in Sacramento to get the city’s far share of state funding. With the current set up the city would be IRRESPONSIBLE not to practice this behavior. The entire cause of this is Prop 13 which consolidated revenues with the state, forcing municipal money to be allocated from the capital. It wasn’t like this before 1978.
Yes, I agree that Prop. 13 is to blame for much of the mess we are in now, but I originally inquired about the Chamber of Commerce, that regularly fights against anything sane on our ballots while it supports the worst sort of government handouts to the private sector. How much of my tax money is going to them, and why do they get any of it at all?
All potholes lead to City Hall.
Gelernt ein ehemaliger deutscher Lehrer hat, wie man mit einem pompösen Esel und für was davonkommen? So kann, dass er die Steuerzahler mit seinem hohen Gehalt vergewaltigen. Er liest diese Geschichten und Kommentare zu seiner Freude. Der kleine faschistische Bastard wird schließlich von seinem Posten in Ungnade fallen. Good Riddance werden der Schrei des Tages von allen.
A former German teacher has learned how to get off with a pompous ass, and for what? So that they rape the taxpayers with his high salary. He will read these stories and comments to his delight. The little fascist bastard will eventually fall from office in disgrace. Good Riddance to the cry of the day by all…
So zis German Bastard has shown his face once more…?
$193 Million dollars buys a lot of chicks with dicks. I’m going to the Naughty Teddy to see what new movies have cum in. Who’s with me.
I’m in! This is just what we wanted for our forty year old downtown redevelopment zone!
So, we conserve water because of the drought, then we have to pay more for water because we aren’t, er, using enough water. We can pay for code enforcement guys to come out and cite you tho for watering at an ILLEGAL TIME!!
I am beginning to hate the People’s Republic of Fullerton.