Talk about a kick in the nuts. First you propose a tax rate JUST UNDER the amount that would trigger an election and give people a chance to vote it down. They seem to do this every year, despite the fact that Finley insists property taxes are just a “small” part of City revenues.
OK then – how about cutting that rate in half and letting people keep that money instead of showing a surplus in your budget?
You can see below that Finley has OTHER ideas for that extra money: namely a 4% Cost Of Living Adjustment (which according to Ryan Ward is NOT a raise) for his gang….
I find this 4% number puzzling, because the Democrats are telling us that inflation is 3% and falling. PLUS, everyone in the City got VERY generous raises in the past when inflation was ZERO.
[For example, in August of 2015 during the very profligate Toups years, City employees were given a raise of FIVE PERCENT in a year the CPI was only 0.1% – essentially ZERO]
That COLA looks like it might cover just about everyone – because $312,000 is 4% of $7.8 million. I find it hard to believe they can justify handing ANOTHER $6,000 to Finley or $4,000 to Cummings or $5,000 to Ward when they are ALREADY paid far over the average for their positions.
P.S. – you will also notice $40,000 for a “water study” – which I think is self explanatory. If previous councils and mayors (**cough** TALBERT **cough**MONROE**) had levied a $2000-per-new-house impact fee over the last few years, they would have about $300,000 in a fund to cover things like this.
INSTEAD, those morons were GIVING money TO developers to build here! Hillside Acres, Hidden Oaks, Brodie Estates, Stone Valley: all of them GIVEN money from the City and ZERO impact fees assessed for things like future water use.
Well, time to pay the fiddler for the water situation…and it’s not the first time. A LOT of money has ALREADY been spent on the “upper pressure plane problem” – which seemed to occur EXACTLY where Deorald Finney put his 69 subsidized houses a couple years ago.
Mind you, this is just to STUDY the problem. Solutions will run into the millions of dollars.
