L-E story: "The 2011 budget was expected to dip into the reserves for about 14 days worth, or about $5.9 million -- each day being worth about $420,000. But the city only had to take about 8.5 days worth, leaving it with 81.5 days. Tomlinson’s budget would dip into the reserves for about 11.5 days worth -- about $4.8 million -- leaving the city at 70 days, still well above the recommended minimum, the mayor said." -- Oh, it's only 11.5 days....hmmmmm, but when you add that Mayor Obamalinson has 3 more budgets to propose, that could mean another (3 x 11.5) 34.5 days cut from the reserve account, and we could be down to only 35.5 days in reserve, and that, my friends, would be catastrophic in terms of credit ratings.
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One thing both voters and Council need to understand is that whenever projects are completed with restricted SPLOST funding, the funding cannot provide ongoing maintenance and day-to-day costs of running those projects, so budgets get highly affected by adding those projects to the ongoing budget needs. A current example is the planned natatorium. Anyone with a pool can attest that expenses associated with it grow exponentially with time. To be of value, the SPLOST projects need to be "revenue positive" from those who actually use the facilities (new ice rink also comes quickly to mind) in order to maintain it for the future.
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Yesterday, I got another of those WIC program calls from Brenda, the director. She apologized if 'you' are not on the program but desperately wanted us to come 'today' with the promise of only a 10-15 minute wait, and 'we' could pick up 3 months of WIC stuff. She pleaded that if 'you' didn't, WIC could possibly be withdrawn in the area because of lack of participation. Isn't that what we want? Don't we want people to work/wean themselves off public aid?. Well, "we" do, but not Director Brenda. Why....because if enough people don't need WIC support anymore, Brenda would lose her job. I think Brenda is actually more concerned about her job than anything else. Closing a public welfare/aid office should be a good sign ..sorta like a 'mortgage burning' celebration. Keeping it open benefits Brenda more than anyone.
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Why is it that we don't see the MCSD coming forward now with plans to eliminate many of the projects on its last SPLOST 'want list" when it's so evident that the total collections the MCSD projected will come in well short of the $225,000,000.00 it calculated it could receive during the closed-end 5 year time frame?
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L-E story: "ATLANTA — Georgia State University has announced that a political science professor at the University of California-Davis is set to come to the university to be the founding dean of its honors college. " -- This has to be a delayed printing of an April Fool's Day joke... please tell me the GA Board of Regents is joking about bringing in any California concepts to GA's education system!
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L-E story: " ATLANTA — Georgia’s tough new immigration bill threatens to harm Atlanta’s reputation as a welcoming city, leaders of the Atlanta Convention and Visitor’s Bureau said. " -- You mean these people are actually paid by Georgians? I do doubt seriously that anyone vacationing/conferencing in Atlanta from a foreign country would not have a passport for legally entering Atlanta.
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L-E headline: "Bernanke: Recession hit low-income people most" -- Brilliant....NOT! Was this an epiphany for the Emperor Scarlet Obama's Federal Reserve guru, or did he actually leave his Ivory Tower and take a walk on the streets?
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Who says the housing market is improving...? There's an ad today for a house on Hilton just reduced by $75K to $675K; not too long ago, I remember this house being marketed at well over $1,000,000.00.
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