If the Desert Trail’s Rebecca Unger keeps up with the great reporting on the City Hall she may be kicked to the curb and relegated to posting on Cactus Thorns. She is beginning to be my literary hero as of late. This weeks report on the City Council Meeting is superb and right on the money.
In reporting of the approval of the 2012/13 $9.8 million budget Unger reported that the $1.7 Million raid of the city’s $12 million reserves had the Kibosh put to it. Much to the dismay of City Manager Warne.
Rebecca quoted:
“I think we should see the final budget before we vote on it,” Corbin stated in his dissenting opinion.
“This budget is a living document,” Councilman Jim Harris asserted. “Even if we vote tonight to approve everything in this budget, the council can go back and review it and make changes.”
It was agreed that wish-list projects in the “living document” could be added back if cash flow allowed. Unger wrote.
“For fiscal year 2012, we project that $990,000 was spent on capital projects,” Warne said. “Our operating costs are flat with last year.”
You can read Rebecca Unger’s entire article in this weeks Desert Trail.
Could it be they are coming around to our way of thinking?,
![[UNSET]](http://www.vote29.com/newmyblog/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/UNSET-75x75.jpg "Local Smoke Shops Shut Down By Sheriff’s Department")
We also need to include Z107.7, Reporter Dan Stork, who expresses the same frustration that I had with rehashing the meeting from a month ago. Our local governments can only improve as the light of truth and accountability continue to shine.
I agree that the local media, The Desert Trail and Z107.7, may have also found this latest budget “twist” by the city manager to be a little too much.
As to how he managed to not realize the council did in fact perform an action on June 26th by telling him to not spend the 1.7 million in reserves and then somehow come back on July 24th and say that there was not a “common understanding”, as Dan Stork reported, is simply amateurish at best.
I thank council members Harris, Corbin, and Klink for stopping the shenanigans and demonstrating to the public who works for whom.
As I said there needed to a tone change in our council and it happened.
As for council member Cole, who is up for re-election in November, his desire to spend the reserves simply adds to the baggage he will need to explain during the campaign.
Steve the City Manager was trolling for a swing vote with his feigned argument — there was “not a common understanding” — in terms of his desire try again to wrap his fingers around the city’s reserves. Nice try Dick but your swing vote didn’t swing.
Thank you Councilman Klink for your vote.
Steve, adding more to Cole’s baggage for his re-election is his underhanded but coup of stacking the oversight board with the Coles, his daughter-in-law supporter, Korina Cole and himself.
When private developers won’t go it alone the market is sending a powerful signal about a project’s profit potential. Stockton’s political establishment ignored these signals, acting as speculators with taxpayers’ money—and they lost.
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=3394