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March 19, 2008
THE CITY COUNCIL SHOULD TAKE THE LEAD--NOT THE FIANANCE COMMITTEE
Tthe City Council should consider doing away with its Finance Committee hearings relating to the City's "Structural Budget Deficit" problems which have been discussed, meeting after meeting, without any real solutions to the disastrous, short and long-term, "Structural Budget Deficit" in the General Fund. The taxpayers now learn, for the first time, that there are at least another 12 funds that are also in a deficit position, including the Redevelopment Fund with a 10 million deficit.
In the meantime, the Finance Committee meetings are tying-up valuable staff time—six or more staff at each of the meetings.
The deficits and the solution is a City Council problem; not a committee problem; and the Council knows that the only long-term solution is to reduce the cost of salaries and benefits or ask the voters for a tax increase, which they probably believes would not be approved at this time.
The only real solution is to secure a voluntary salary and benefit reduction from its unions, which is probably unlikely, unless the City Council threatens bankruptcy.
It appears that the Finance Committee meetings are a way of delaying a solution to the "Structural Budget Deficit" until after the November elections.
Posted by Fred at 11:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 06, 2008
CITY OF CHICO--IS BANKRUPTCY ITS FUTURE?
Is the City of Chico slipping, slowly but surely, toward bankruptcy as is one of California cities; Vallejo, California.
Bankruptcy being discussed by the City of Vallejo was mentioned by Chico’s Director of Finance, during the recent update of the City’s financial status. Many of Vallejo’s problems, relating to police and fire salaries and benefits as well other employee contracts, are the same problems of the City of Chico. The City recently enter into a new contract with its Firefighter, giving them a 5% salary increase for the first year of the contract and 4% for next 5 years. And the Police union has a “me too” contract that provides them with the same increases as was given to the Firefighters. I don’t write this to place blame on the Firefighters for the City’s structural deficit problem, since other employee contracts are a portion of the employee’s costs that are major contributors to the City’s fiscal problem.
All blame for the City’s financial problem belongs to the City Council that has the final authority on all fiscal matters of the City.
Although there has been much discussion and many meetings about actions that may save the City from bankruptcy, I have not heard of any real leadership by the City Council attempting to resolve the financial disaster that faces the City.
Without City Council leadership, the “ship” may well sink into bankruptcy.
Posted by Fred at 12:56 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack