Tonights westside budget townhall hosted by David Sage, Karen Schmidt, and Scott Black was interesting. They started with a slide presentation to show here is where money is coming from, here is where money is going, and here is the gap in the middle. Then they asked, if in high level turns, people were for all cuts, all tax/fees increased, or a mix. Most of the crowd was in favor of a mix. Comments were handled respectfully even when people didnt agree. Tim Tilton brought up an excellent point that bulk waste collection was costly and should be either passed on to the users. I think that should be true, or at least the number of times it is picked up be reduced to every-other month or quarterly. We pay more for bulk waste pickup than we do regular trash pickup, because it requires a crew of 5 guys. Former Mayor Jesse Smart brought up an excellent point that the city (and I think its citizens) would do a huge favor to us all is they choose to spend more money locally instead of awarding contracts to companies outside our community. 1 dollar spent locally gets recirculated 7 times - imagine if it was $5 million the city spent? There are some statutes that require the city to get bids and almost forces them to go with the lowest bidder. During my short stint on council, I asked why we couldnt just change the statutes to favor local bidders? Something along the lines that if a local company was within 5% (or some number that fiscally makes sense and is legal) and was employing local labor, they be awarded the bids. Of course I wasnt elected, so I couldnt keep pushing for that idea. :P
Posted on: Thu, 10 Apr 2014 03:28:19 +0000
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