5 thoughts on “Budget Reductions”

1. I know this comment is late in coming. However, I believe it to be important to look beyond titles and budgets. So many people comment about the uncertainty of these times, but all the positions represent real people who have real bills—loans, mortgages, and the need to pay for everyday items. These people are also educators impacting the lives of our children! I know quite a few people on this list. Please don’t be fooled into thinking this is why I am responding to this blog entry. I am responding because I know the impact it will personally have on my children. The School Department has been told to find ways to meet their budget, and they have. If what has been proposed comes in under the cap, and causes no increases in local taxes, then as distasteful as it is, one of the budgets should be approved…preferably one that impacts students the least.

2. and distasteful refers to people losing their jobs

3. It’s unfortunate that these job losses were dangled out in the public…this all could have been avoided if there was political will to begin reforming Rochester government operations…the tax cap passed in November and not one single attempt has been made to look at governing differently…no one wants to see people lose their jobs regardless of they do…I don’t believe that simply because their is a justifiable limit on government spending that our students should suffer…there are several ways for the the city and school department to work together to outsource, consolidate, automate and essential re-tool how Rochester operates…of course the public labor unions have an opportunity to fore go their raises for 2010…all these things combined would result in ZERO layoffs in the city and school department…but, because there has been ZERO political will to change the way business is done in Rochester, we will have to endure the same old same old…all these “special” people who work for the city and school department and no one creative (doesn’t even have to be original) way to deal with a smaller than normal INCREASE?…all it takes is the political will to make change happen…all it takes is leadership…don’t blame the cap, blame the uncreative and uninspiring people we have running things in Rochester!

4. ah, the problems with losing a post…I’ll try again

   To the point, posting positions puts a human face to the bottom line. Of course no one wants to see another person lose their job and that has happened all too often here in Rochester. However, if everything is presented in terms of dollars without knowing the human cost involved, then that doesn’t seem right either. I’d certainly be interested in knowing how Rochester’s city government and school department should outsource, consolidate, automate. I’m not generally a union gal, but our unions aren’t all bad. A more fair wage has come out of those negotiations, but even so I’ve had to think about getting a second part-time job. I don’t know how I’d manage it with a husband who works 60 hours a week and three children who need help and attention, and only one car at the moment. I worry about the older folks in town too. However, given all these cencerns, it’s still worth it to pay a little more if it means assuring that my kids continue to receive an excellent education!

5. So, taxpayers aren’t human beings?…and I’d beg to differ on the fair wage thing…up until last year’s budget, Rochester municipal government spending average 8.8% increases for several years…labor union contracts and non-union raises ( not including benefits) were 4% to as much as 20% in isolated instances…from 2000-2006, the average Rochester household income rose by only 2.5% per year…and, while were seeing increases in spending and wages, what really changed?…can we say that services really increased by 8.8% per year?…we did see some improvement in education test scores, but our high school has a nearly 22% dropout rate, essential wiping out any progress made in earlier grades…look, nothing is perfect and I believe that Rochester has many good honest hard working employees, but everyone needs to sacrifice right now, so if city and school employees have to forego raises for a year or 2 until we come out of the nasty economic circumstances we are in, then so be it…at least they won’t lose their jobs…if they can’t be happy with that, then they will find little sympathy from the majority of people right now…and, with the job market in a bad way, why would we want to pay premium wages any way?…it makes no sense…as far as outsourcing, consolidating and automating is concerned, go to http://www.thewatchdog.info/documents.html and download the constructive suggestions I presented to the City Council, School board and Police Commission…they are not the be all end all and they require the burden to be shared by all, but they are a start…my point with presenting these suggestions was to have my elected leaders look at measures that could reduce cost with out costing jobs and services…what’s wrong with automating (using the internet) paying bills like taxes, water & sewer?…we could automate things like dog licenses &building permits…not everyone uses the internet and even then not everyone would do business over the internet, but more and more people are moving that way and it makes sense…customer service would increases and we wouldn’t need as much human resource to accomplish the same thing…outsourcing every public works function that is not cost competitive makes perfect sense too…we pay 100’s of thousands of dollars that the DPW admits they don’t maintain properly because they don’t have an expensive wash rack…I’d cost analysis the whole department and outsource everything that made sense…this could lead to an average of 20% cost reduction and as much as 40%…we could look at consolidating the city and school business offices…the school department has a budget that is nearly twice the city’s, yet the school department gets the job done with half as many people?…sounds like an opportunity to consolidate to me…we should look at consolidating every duplicate function, especially our purchasing, which should be taken to the county level and perhaps even to the state level…ultimately, it’s about getting the job done…if we can do more and it costs less, why not?…I expect my elected leaders to have the wisdom and courage to step outside of the way this city has done business and find a way to continue to deliver services while reducing and containing costs…I don’t believe government has the answers to every problem people face…there is such a thing as personal responsibility and knowing when the government should lead by getting out of the way…the more money thet take the less freedom we have to make our own choices…