THE DEAD BUDGET SOCIETY, Pt. 2
Well, it’s two weeks later and our city council still can’t decide on a budget. I’ve been asking around and nobody can remember this ever happening before.
Staff had presented a whole slew of options but the basic premise remained the same for our brave councilors: budget reductions or not?
The fact that the budget still includes numerous unfilled positions seems not to have sunk in to the avowed defenders of Fullerton’s bureaucrats, Ahmad Zahra and Jesus Quirk-Silva who also want to remunerate employees with Federal Biden Bucks. Bruce Whitaker and Nicholas Dunlap keep insisting on cuts to address our permanent structural budget deficit.
And then there’s the guy in the middle, Fred Jung, who has staked out a via media and hasn’t moved from his position of a smaller cut.
But what seems to have happened is That Quirk-Silva was willing to go along with Jung at a 1% budget cut, but that Zahra would have none of it. Meantime Whitaker and Dunlap were willing to come down too, but not far enough for Jung.
My bet is we will see Jung, Whitaker, and Dunlap at 2%, or so; Zahra will pout; Quirk-Silva, seeing the handwriting on the wall may want to show unity. But more likely he’ll vote no and at least appear to be supporting his real constituents in City Hall.
What fun! I don’t know how this can keep going, but I love the lack of appeasement and fake collegiality, and the Fitzgeraldine behind-the-scenes monkey business.
The funny thing is that none of these people could do their own analysis so they are just throwing out percentages and stubbornly sticking to them.
Jesus Quirk probably can’t balance his check book.
Zahra doesn’t have a check book. He feeds himself by wandering around to charity events in search of food and photo ops.
The sad part is that none of it even matters. Fullerton is on a freight train to insolvency that even a council full of tightwads couldn’t delay for more than a few years.
Ay, there’s no hope for this town. We’ll all become potholes soon.
Put away the mini bikes, pack up the clown shoes….
You should *never* give people who clearly don’t competency in even basic math (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division) budget authority. From where I sit, there are two council members who would definitely fail a basic elementary school math proficiency test, two who might pass with a C or D and one who could pass with a B or better.
Sounds like a council F, marry, kill.
Maybe Fullerton should just throw in the towel and become an unincorporated community of Orange County.
The budget debate is actually very alive. This is a good thing as it shows that the Council is considering and debating issues that are never presented to Council. Past decisions have, for at least the last 20 years, been made by Staff for Staff.
Contract paramedic services to the private sector, save millions every year.