In an earlier post, I suggested that the dispute over sanitation losses be settled by making the numbers public.
Mayor Garner has responded.
Below are graphs from a PowerPoint presentation made available by the Mayor showing sanitation financials from 1998 through 2004:
I asked Mayor Garner how CM Bill Schmidt could've possibly come up with a number several hundred thousand less than his own estimate. The Mayor, in spite of the challenge to his competency, took the high road and simply explained that the state audit sheet from which CM Schmidt was reading contained a calculation error.
In the fund accounting required by the state, accounts normally carry rolling balances. In a miscalculation that City Controller Kay Garry is investigating, rather than showing that balance, the state calculated the difference between 2003 and 2004 losses. The $34,000 that Schmidt quoted acutally indicates that sanitation lost $34,000 more in 2004 than it did in 2003.
It's unfortunate that the sanitation situation can't be miraculously cured by discovering a mistake in the initial diagnosis. Anything, of course, is possible, but it's going to take more expertise and hard work than any of the current staff have ever exhibited and it may, in fact, require a decision to be made allowing for death with dignity. Let's just make sure that both the doctors and patients know that.
8 comments:
If, in the ongoing absence of any plan to the contrary, the opposition of the council's Gang of Four turns out to have scotched any chance to solve the city's sanitation problems and massive bleeding continues through the end of the year, do you think any of them will do the honorable thing and resign?
Blue in the face, and holding my breath ...
Brandon,
I'm glad you mentioned that as I forgot to. The Mayor has promised more documentation and I'll forward it along when I receive it.
You can't blame Schmidt for simply reading a state audit and coming up with that number for a single year as he did.
You have to wonder, though, why someone with his years of experience and access to financial records wouldn't question why it seemed so different from previous years.
Instead of clearing it up, he went public with it as fact. What matters now, I guess, is how he deals with it.
Besides government, there is no other business I know of that can continually spend more than they bring in and still keep their jobs. Ben Franklin stated it correctly 200 years ago. "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." This pretty much sums up the city and county governments we currently have.
Help - someone's kidnapped Tim and is using his identity on line.
But seriously ... okay. Sounds reasonable.
Somehow I feel that this is heading in a direction that I suspected all along, but just for the sake of the discussion, perhaps you might explain to us the real foundation of this sudden conversion to kindliness?
Seems that the right side of the table spent most of the meeting last night praising each other. Is this a coincidence?
Where are you headed, Tim?
Wrong answer, at least in my book.
I don't recall there being a time when I've advocated anything other than the perfect right of any American to call a politician a son of a bitch IF and AS LONG AS he or she isn't hiding behind a cowardly veil of anonymity.
Furthermore, if you are sincere in your invitation, please note that a similar invitation has long since been extended to you: Come on board and play for the winning team. I actually believe you when you speak of common desires to make this a better place. Now the burden is on you to prove it.
And, please go one step further and explain to me -- not to "us", as this is between you and I -- what your miraculous conversion to political civility has to do with your recent love embrace of the rapidly disintegrating Steve Price, whose fundamentally hillbilly worldview simply has no room for you unless he can use you for some purpose.
Sorry to be a skeptic, Tim, but we've known each other for too long.
Your last sentence is true, and I agree.
As for my councilman, what can be said? He has consistently voted against the interests of his district -- again, again, and again. To what constituency is this man playing?
I think you know the answer, and is the constiuency that is the problem, not the solution.
Not only does Mr. Price vote against the interests of his district, but he does so in a manner that suggests contempt (or at best, incomprehension) for the very factors best able to lift the city out of its funk.
How do you defend that?
Has he put you up to this?
If you want to arrange a meeting, have at it. I'll sit and talk with anyone, because I believe that a fundamental necessity of leadership is an ability to see beyond one's own peer group, and into the psyche of others who weren't raised the same way.
I grew up with any number of Steve Prices, but can he try to understand me? Is he able? You say yes, but such an ability has yet to be demonstrated.
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