The new and revised city budget for 29 Palms was posted yesterday on the city website. A total of 67 pages – down considerably from the original 420 pages.
The first glaring item I noticed was the now infamous use of 1.7 Million dollars of the city reserves to balance the old budget. Well it is back in this budget even when I heard the Council tell the city manager on June 26, 2012 that any use of the current reserve was not going to be allowed.
Has something changed since June 26, 2012?
The Mintz proposal was to establish a list of eventual projects to be built/completed if there was a fund balance at the end of this upcoming fiscal year. Meaning if come June 30, 2013 there is a fund balance of 1.7 million dollars then those projects that they talked about for an hour would be authorized to proceed and the ending year enexpended funds/fund balance would not be put into the existing reserves but used to build the items on the wish list.
I will be making my phone calls and trying to sort this all out as time permits over the next few days.
I also will be going over this shorter version of the budget with a fine tooth comb.
I also noted that there is a closed session item on the city manager. Since he is only providing a 1% cost of living allowance to employees of the city there had best not be any discussion of any increase in his salary or benefits at all given his level of performance over the last 14 months.
City Manager Using Reserves to Balance Budget Again When Told "No" in June - Or Was He?,
Steve, God speed in sorting this out.
Minutes of the City Council Meeting for July 24th are now posted on the city homepage. Seems a delegate will be considered to attend the League of California Cities’ Annual Conference. This organization deserves no respect given it’s finagling over the old rda, and indirectly being pushing for the city’s irrevocable bond $31 million bond debt.
The agenda also calls for councilmen to come up with items to be placed on the agenda. They will be given ample time to consider issues.
Given the recent gutting of parts of the Brown Act, I encourage a city resolution to continue posting the agenda on the city webpage, and making available to the public the outcome of “closed meetings” which was wiped clean from the act. After all, the city council serves its people.
No merit raise for a city manager who worked very hard to yoke the city with a $31,000,000 bond debt with clearly nothing whatsoever to show for it but grief and a 30 years of paying it back in the face of shrinking tax revenues.
He ought to get the boot.
Uh, where are the rest of the reports? Agenda items 7-13.
Well all the reports that are usually there are there – kind of. Pay no attention to the reports numbers and thinking they match the agenda numbers. Most of them do but some do not.
What is missing are the minutes and the Warrant Register other than that you need to click on all three report listings and then go looking.
So a $31 million debt by the hands of Lord Richard isn’t enough; he’s going to tap those reserves anyway and the city council be damned.
That is the way it appears at the moment. Here is what the Desert Trail had to say on Thursday, June 28, 2012:
“He (WARNE) invited the council and the public to take a line-item approach to the expenditures, and they shaved off about $710,000 in discretionary spending.
Getting thumbs down were the $350,000 children’s splash pad at Luckie Park, the $150,000 in initial engineering costs for a possible bridge over the Donnell Basin Flood Control Basin at Split Rock Avenue, a $100,000 set-aside for park property acquisition, and approximately $110,000 for two informational sign projects.”
According to this just submitted budget by WARNE all those items are back in play.
So either WARNE did not hear what was said on June 26, 2012 by the Council, or WARNE is simply ignoring the council, or he is just incompetent, or which is more likely than not, he has spent the last few weeks speaking to three council members and ignoring two others. He apparently feels that he has COLE and MINTZ safely in his corner. He has then spent several weeks working on KLINK.
Any casual viewer of the tape of the council meeting from June 26 will clearly see that HARRIS and CORBIN were not interested in spending any part of the current reserve. COLE and MINTZ saw no problem provided it was presented in a screen of smoke. KLINK was on the border.
Again I do not make this stuff up it is there for all to read and then evaluate and come up with your conclusions The above is just mine.
Well, Steve, any one that does not live in a bubble can understand that when Lord Richard moves on, he will needs something to show for it on his Résumé. That’s what it’s all about. He’s finished here and I believe he knows it. The writing is on the wall of shame.
Mintz has backed Richard’s maneuvers like a well orchestration stage hand. Cole needs to move on to retirement and working in the garden. Councilman Klink needs to be loyal to his community and not vacillation on maintaining those reserves.
UPDATE:
Sources at city hall report that pressure has been exerted on city manager WARNE about his “new” budget and how on paper, and as published at the city website, is a no change budget from what he was told to fix on June 26, 2012.
It is expected that tonight WARNE will “somehow” incorporate into his presentation the removal of the 1.7 million dollars in reserve spending to build projects that he was told to remove on June 26 but did not as evidenced by the published budget.
If these sources are correct then it appears that Cactus Thorns has been successful in forcing transparency and accountability upon city staff.
It will be refreshing to see the budget presented the way our council directed WARNE to fix/prepare it and not have WARNE stick in in their face by not doing what he was told to do.