Wednesday, June 25, 2008

No rubber stamping here

I'm finally getting around to uploading some video from the June 10 meeting and decided to start with this memorable moment:

To his credit, Councilman Mike Ecke made it very clear that he was not going to simply rubber stamp this request from Personnel.

I know some of you disagree with how this played out, but I do feel Mike deserves credit for having followed Nancy Reagan's advice on this. Mike "just said no."

Some political analysis here... while this particular dollar value ($4500/yr) being discussed is not huge (in terms of a $100million budget)... this particular budget item does demonstrate something of a divide within the Council's Democratic caucus... on spending issues, Personnel Committee Chairman Matt Altieri is clearly to the left of Ecke (or Ecke is to the right of Altieri)... either that... or spending is of little concern to Altieri, so he simply didn't ask any questions about costs when it went through his committee.

Tim White

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

At the last council meeting the council approved an additional paid position in the fire department. In the first year money from a possible grant would cover most of the cost and the additional $12,000 could come from the additional revenues of approx $70,000 that Patti Lynn-Ryan said the town received. I heard many of the dems say that "safety" is an important issue in town so I wondered if it's ok to add to the fire department, then why not reinstate the police department position that the dems cut from the budget? Surely they'd want to do this if safety was a real concern to them. There would still be $58,000 of that $70,000 to cover the cost...unless there's other plans for it. If it isn't something that will happen, where will that $58,000 go? To the rainy day fund?

Anonymous said...

Welcome to the Lou Zullo show. I have stated in the past how arrogant he is. Try working for(now with- because you are beneath him) the guy!
Michael Milone has always been a gentleman.