The assembly hound car fires up again to take another trip down the taxpayer money spending freeway tonight at 6pm and tomorrow night if needed.
And there seems to be a lot of "needs" pending in secret hound pockets and not so secret that its looking like tonight might not do it. Our own heads are hitting the desk with that thought.
We do know of the threat of one amendment that tumbled out when the car threw on the brakes quite suddenly at the end of last nights meeting.
Assembly spending hound Halter gave notice he plans to have an amendment tucked under his hound arm at tonight's budget deliberation meeting to cut the already adopted education funding. Uh huh the amendment passed already giving the school district the nominal 3% increase they have asked for that was proposed by both Keogh and Arvin and adopted. We recall Halter was the lone "no' vote.
Hound Halter said his proposed cut would whack 1% out of the measly 3% and bring it to 2%. Huge dollars when the district is stinging from another year of flat funding from the state.
We don't know why but we are pretty sure it has to do with something about putting more in the spending hound trunk for Halter's district for things like the $1.4M Talkeetna library. A project we support but not at the cost of education for kids in the whole borough. We wish spending hound Halter would show a little more leadership to advocate for the adequate funding for borough services that continue to climb in cost and projects even if that means a slight increase in the mill rate.
Is assembly hound Halter that afraid of the ceremonial mayors scepter veto pen that might threaten his $75,000 for portable bathrooms in Meadow Lakes or some other tucked in project? Or is he nursing some kind of a grudge against the district for a undisclosed sin? This is his second whack at the school budget.
The spending hounds are suppose to be delivered tonight the list of where they can find hiding $3M in past capital projects of unassigned funds from both the manager and the hired financial analyst sitting in the borough piggy bank.We are expecting all kinds of fun hearing the outcome of that tonight.
The borough manager is out of town on a scheduled approved vacation so the assistant manager and finance director will be fielding those question handballs It's possible the hounds will be taking the borough attorney out for a good run trying to keep them in line of what can be loved around the financial checkerboard.
We don't know if Mr. Wilson the hired budget guru will be here in person earning his $225.00 a hour fee. Perhaps he will be calling it in or he has submitted his homework via email. We hope the dog didn't eat it.
There is much to do on the budget. The assembly spending hounds have drug it through the streets of the public process like a favorite squeaky toy. Part of the squeak is the cost to the taxpayers of the process to deliberate the budget that has been adopted this year. You however can hear it for free as it is streamed by our community radio station at www.radiofreepalmer.org. starting at 6pm tonight.
Not too late to send the assembly spending hounds a note to let them know your priorities for the budget. While your at it let them know how you feel about holding education hostage for their sacred cows.
We'll be there until its done. However spending assembly hound Salmon has already given notice after tonight his attention span will have reached his limit. Besides, his wife is having a birthday and cold assembly pizza for dinner and sitting on a hard chair isn't what he has in mind for the evening.
Posted with Blogsy
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