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Turner Visits the City Council

After 8 years of Atlanta citizenry I decided to register my existence and attend Thursday’s public hearing at City Hall on the 2010 proposed budget. I wanted to weigh in. I have been watchin the citizen pros like Dave Walker and Mr. Duncan lay into the Council day after day on Atlanta Channel 26. I figured, ‘How hard can it be?’ I even got a tattoo of the Atlanta City seal on my arm to mark the occasion. Let me just say that the Council Chambers are a lot more intimate than they look on TV and I wasn’t the only person in the audience with the City seal on my arm. There were a lot of Cops, Firefighters and about 20 guards from the Department of Corrections directly in front of me. Council Members Present: Borders, Shook (facilitator), Muller, Moore, Maddox, Martin and Norwood (Winslow bounced in for a second) The meeting opened up with a 15 min presentation from Jim Glass (retiring CFO) on the revised 2010 Budget. Council Budget Presentation Highlights: 1. Ending Furloughs to increase public safety and service at a cost of $18.3M 2. A 3 Millage point increase in property taxes 3. Reorganization of the Jail (thus the guard army) Then we got into the fun stuff. Charts and Graphs. The first one was titled: “Despite relentless cost reduction, the City’s gap is $56 Million” 2010 Revenues – $485 Million 2010 Expenses – $541 Million GAP ($56 Million) http://metrognomeagency.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/budgetgap2010.jpg “General Fund spending per capita has fallen by 20%” FY2001 Spending per Capita = $1200 FY2009 Spending per Capita = $1000 http://metrognomeagency.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/spendingpercapita2009.jpg No source for the numbers are given so I tried backing into these using the numbers presented. If our current population is 520,000 and we have experienced a 25% growth then I would expect the 2001 population to be 416,000. (519,000 / 1.25) I would expect spending to be… FY2001 Spending = $1200 x 416,000 or $499 Million FY2009 Spending = $1000 x 520,000 or $520 Million FY2010 Spending = $1040 x 520,000 or $541 Million (Proposed 2010 Expenses from the first chart) hummm… that spending per Capita number just went back up. Then there were like 5 pages of charts comparing us to various cities. There were pointless pie charts showing the giant pacman shaped chuck representing the Public Safety piece of the pie. At last we get to the Revenue and Expense pages. There were line graphs by year, well kinda. This note is at the bottom of each report that says: “Note: 2006 was a half year. 2006 numbers not included in order to highlight trends.” (There is no note explaining why 2010 revenue and expenses are not included.) The Revenue Chart has the title: “Since 2002 the City’s real revenues are slightly negative even though its population has grown by 25%” http://metrognomeagency.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/revenuereport.jpg (“real” doesn’t speak to the integrity of the numbers it just means that historical values have been adjusted for inflation. All values from the future are real, make sense? Raise your hand if you hate accounting) Actual Revenues 2002 – $424 Million 2009 – $497 Million Inflation Adjusted Revenues 2002 – $501 Million 2009 – $497 Million The next chart showed Revenue AND Expenses but guess what. The numbers weren’t real. http://metrognomeagency.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/expensereport.jpg I have added the real numbers below so you can see what they would have looked like. Actual Expenses 2002 – $362 Million 2009 – $523 Million Inflation Adjusted Expenses 2002 – $429 Million 2009 – $523 Million I had so many numbers in my head and my notes were starting to look like some Crossword Sudoku hybrid.. Let’s look at what was said using the “real” numbers this time… “Despite relentless cost reduction, the City’s gap is $56 Million” 2002 Expenses: $429 Million 2002 Revenues: $501 Million 2002 Gap – $72 Million Surplus 2010 Expenses: $541 Million 2010 Revenues: $485 Million 2010 Gap – ($56 Million shortfall!!) The Real Gap – $128 Million “The City has significantly improved its expense performance over the last 8 years” Real Expense Increase – $112 Million (yeah expenses are on steroids if you asked me) “The Revenues of the City have been seriously impacted by the economy” Population Increase – 25% Real Revenue Decrease – ($16 Million) “Sales Tax is down 10%, Construction 61% and Tourism 24%.”(We suck) Public Speaker Highlights: Dave Walker has been to every council meeting for the last 25 years and has the long gray beard to show for it. He scoffed at the council’s presentation in grandiose fashion. And then he told the story of the City Seal. My tattoo’s stock just went up. He called on somebody to rise like the Phoenix before we all burn down to the grown….again. Then all of a sudden all 20 guards from the Department of Corrections stood up at the same time. I thought we were doing the pledge of allegiance so I started standing up and then I realized it was a show of force for their speaker and I wasn’t invited. Woops. Apparently Corrections isn’t seeing any staff relief from the furlough lifting. The council is proposing reorganization and they weren’t too happy about it. Their union rep opened with something like, “How are you going to reorganize a building whose only function is to store people in boxes?” Several citizens spoke in disgust about the property tax increase in these times. Couple funny ones and a couple deep seeded angry ones. Wow. Then a Firefighter Union rep got up and asked for 10 minutes. Shook said no you get 3 like everybody else. Union guy holds up the speaking rules and points out that rule 4 says organizations get 10 minutes. http://metrognomeagency.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/publichearingrules.jpg The people’s interpreter CT Martin then chimes in and proceeds to spend 5 minutes trying to recall the language of the rule even though a copy was right in front of him. He employed a similar technique when he derailed the Citizen’s Review Board at the 11th hour a few weeks back. Then Shook and Martin went at it. Felicia Moore, the resident adult, steps in and breaks it up and then I think Maddox jumped in and said that the Corrections rep should get more time then even though he wasn’t the current requestor of time. The Public Record is skipping. Borders and Norwood sat silent like most the Council members running for Mayor. Martin pretty much speaks enough for all of them combined. 15 Minutes later the Union rep got his 10 minutes. Mr. Duncan got everybody to laugh when he thanked Mr. Glass for serving from “One old fart to another old fart.” Then my number was called…yikes! I walked up there, heart pounding, and have no idea what I said. Something like, “Thanks for serving, these numbers are crap but I can’t prove it, cops mad and people mad is bad, call the state.” - Turner  Read More →

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