Zoo lovers, get ready for another budget battle at City Hall.
So should Kansas Citians who support Liberty Memorial, those who want to put dozens of new police officers on the street, and neighborhood residents who expect pickups for bulky items.
The city faces a potential $60 million shortfall in its next budget of around $1.3 billion.
Tax revenues are expected to be flat, while costs are projected to increase for employee salaries, health and pension benefits, utilities, building repairs and the city’s recycling program.
Painful choices are ahead.
But it’s already clear that City Hall should be moving to reduce personnel, ask employees to pay more for health care and trim the city’s future obligations for its overly generous pension systems.
Private companies are taking similar actions in tight times. Government should not be exempt.
Budget discussions will ramp up in a few weeks, requiring fully focused leadership.
Mayor Mark Funkhouser should put aside his petty concerns about his wife’s role at City Hall.
City Council members need to step up their efforts to work productively with the mayor.
And City Manager Wayne Cauthen and his staff must provide specific budget proposals.
They ought to include suggested consolidations of departments as well as plans to combine information technology functions now spread among several city agencies.
More bad news for taxpayers looms.
It appears they may be on the hook for several million dollars in debt payments for bonds used to help build the Power & Light District. The city is paying higher interest costs than expected for the bonds, while district revenues are not meeting original expectations.
The district, along with the Sprint Center, has been a welcome addition to downtown. But it’s still disappointing that the entertainment district’s cost to taxpayers is likely to escalate.
Those taxpayers deserve a city government that’s dedicated to responsibly paring the budget in the coming months while protecting essential services.
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Yael - did you offer to quit to save others' jobs?
Fox News reported yet another round of layoffs at your mother ship, this time 50 jobs.
Did you, in your liberal sensibility of caring for all others, offer to give up your well-paid position to save maybe 3 or 4 other lower-paying jobs, in the spirit of redistributing the wealth from the higher-paid to the lower-paid?
What's that?? You didn't?? Why, how unfeeling of you, Yael, how monstrous that you didn't put the welfare of others ahead of you and your family's. What kind of monster ARE you, Yael? How will you live with yourself knowing that such a sacrifice on your part would have benefited others?
I am deeply disappointed, Yael, and I know those who love you must hate what you have done, by not standing up to your liberal principles of redistribution of wealth and sharing the pain. Of course, when it comes to YOUR wealth, you have strongly different opinions, no?
Nice job, you hypocrite.
Yael T Abouhalkah --- master of the house
Isn't this is why you counseled the Big Funk for many years on how to become Mayor? Isn't the Funkmeister supposed to be the municipal savior who is "smart with the money?" Where is the big lug, Yael? Still hiding at home? Lunching with you? You keep avoiding my lunch invitation so why shouldn't I think you and the Funk are off in some corner of the City breaking breasd, skillfully planning how to resurrect his career as the Mayor?
Have lunch with me Yael... I am more amusing than the Funk and have more to say on how one might go about helping the Citizens live in a better City without further taxing them into oblivion. And I don't care about the Squid nor do I need her by my side 24/7.
A funny side piece, YTA... when he duped the Council into allowing Big Ed Wolf to double dip, he claimed that Big Ed was essential to having a "City that Works." Well Big Ed Wolf is no more and putting aside the abysmal Annual Citizen Satisfaction Survey which was held back until after the light rail vote, it seems obvious to even the most casual observer that things weren't working while Big Ed was around (I say around because I don't think he did much) and I am wondering what new irreplacable double dipper the Funk wants to bring in now to save the day. It's not Schmendrick Blackwood... is it? It can't be Schmendrick... he's a nobody!
LOL!!!
Abouhalkah, having survived yesterday's round of beheadings on Grand Blvd., says it's "clear that City Hall should be moving to reduce personnel, ask employees to pay more for health care and trim the city’s future obligations for its overly generous pension systems."
I have an idea how the Star can increase its profitability.
Only $60 million short?
Tell me Yael, how many City employees would have to be cut to cover $60 million?
The Council and Mayor continue to approve more and more TIF projects, deferring tax revenues, while the City sinks.
If the Mayor could spare just a few minutes every week on something other than getting his wife back into City Hall, and if he would do something to try to find one or two members of the Council who have not totally written him off as an idiot, maybe they could spend that time looking at all programs of the City to see where any fat can be found. I doubt they will find much and the decisions this round will be much tougher than they were last time.
The main thing they can do to cut the 2009 budget is defer some construction that isn't critical and stop approving tax waivers.