FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Saturday, July 18 2009
Notice of 2009 Budget Deficit
Attached is a copy of a letter from Mayor Finkbeiner to City Council regarding the 2009 budget deficit. In the letter, Mayor Finkbeiner attached an analysis of savings for the tentative agreement with Local 92 and the expected cost savings with the TPCOA contract.
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2 comments:
Maggie,
This is exactly why czarty HAS to go, his thinking is one dimensional in that his only (ultimate) solution to any budgetary problem is to raise taxes...
I have never been a Mayor and chances are pretty good that I will never be, but I can see at least a couple of other alternatives to the problem.
Prioritize the budget and cut out the items that break the budget, such as the perennial pools & flowers and making the budget smaller, not bigger.
And another is reforming the City's union contracts by realistically pricing the wages in ALL pay groups, buying back or negotiating away (immediately) the number of City "holidays" incrementally from the current 13 (plus one discretionary) to between 6 and 9; adding more pay grades (to more easily accomplish the proper pay grading, and reversing the 10% PERS pickup back to where the employee pays 100% of their own share.
In the short term though, the employee's apparent wage rates would increase, but the burden of their PERS contribution and their health care co-pay would now be paid from the proper source, the employee...
Eventually though, the wages paid to certain individuals may have to be adjusted downwards (or, upwards) to reflect the real world marketplace.
Disclaimer:
I am a former City worker and have previously benefited from some of the benefits that I have outlined here, yet I have never agreed with the way that wages & benefits were structured, and have said so in the past.
I'll expound on this more in a blog post of my own ;-)
Since he isn't running for mayor, maybe Carty just doesn't care how high taxes go in Toledo. He probably will leave town next year, so it won't concern him. How about Ann Arbor so he can live next to his favorite football coach?
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