Wednesday, September 02, 2009

Tonight's 09/10 capital budget vote

Anyone catch the meeting tonight? Tom Ruocco presented his budget and he got support from Rs, but no bipartisan support.

The main concern for me was the pool. I intend to post the video of my comments ASAP, but in the meantime have to say that I'm disappointed in (what I view as) the intellectual dishonesty of the majority.

I don't recall the specific words, but it sounded to me as though the majority kept saying "The Republicans want to close the pool." And this comes from the same group of people who claimed they didn't understand the phrase "request for information." Such a bunch of baloney.

If they wanted to be somewhat fair, they could've at least acknowledged their footdragging on the pool RFP. But then, their goal isn't good policy... it's good politics. Though frankly, I'm not convinced that talking about spending more money on the pool is good politics. Nonetheless, I wish they could at least be intellectually honest in the fact that they're the dillydallyers who've failed to take expeditious action on the bubble. But then, I guess I shouldn't be surprised:



Unlike my colleagues to my left, I tried to be fair tonight. I thanked Councilman Altieri for his sincere (if ill-timed) consideration of performance contracting. Could you imagine Councilman Ecke thanking me for trying to action on the pool? After four years of chest pounding and indignation over stuff like

1) questioning his turf and
2) requesting consideration of performance contracting

I certainly couldn't imagine him being fair in his comments about how any Republican Council member feels about the pool.

Two months.

Anyone write any letters to the editor yet?

Tim White

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Being fair" is not part of Ecke's personality.
His arrogance not only to the Republicans on the council but to citizens who question him is enough to vote him out of office.

If you can't be an open minded thinker than you shouldn't be in a position to serve the public. There are too many in this town with their own agendas.

Anonymous said...

I liked the fact that Jim Sima questioned the $190K pool spending by pointing out that if one of those contractors can't provide the bond necessary then the cost of repairs will go beyond the $190K.
And if I understood the R's correctly they wanted to pull the pool spending out of the capital budget and have it come out of the operating budget. They didn't say they wanted to close the pool as the D's tried to make it sound!!

The D's tried saying that the council as a whole agreed on most of the items; but what I see the bottom line as is that the D's are just spending & borrowing more. Instead of reducing expenses (like many of us have to do)they're just increasing them. The R's always are able to find a reasonable alternative that reduces expenses & borrowing, and the D's always refuse to go along with it.
So who's the more fiscally responsible party?? It's a no-brainer.

Anonymous said...

Why are we allowing this contractor more time than the open period to get bonding? Submit your bid with your bond by X day and thats it. Are we trying to steer this contract to someone special?

Anonymous said...

Of course. How could anything else be concluded based on the evidence?