Tonight at the Town Hall.... The Budget
Tonight at 7PM, in the Blummer Room and on your local government access channel, the budget summit will commence. We will hear from the party loyalists who have gotten us into this trouble to begin with. We all will be shocked and awed in what is being proposed and if you are a parent of school age children, you may even be distressed.
Although the final numbers are and will not be in for months, it's very clear we will be down millions and will re-shape this Town. My submitted suggestions include, forcing organized labor to adopt managed health care, (2 million) take 2 million in overtime from police and fire, eliminate school choice, no raises for any Town employee and no override.
Simplistic suggestions..... you bet they are. Do they have the courage to make the hard choices? we'll see what they roll out tonight.
posted by Jim Pillsbury @ 8:21 AM
5 Comments
5 Comments:
I watched this last night, and the most truthful comments I heard were the ones that said we are in for a long ride before things get better. This tunnel we are in is too long to see the light at the end of it. Lets hope our town officials got that point last night.
I was pleased to see the woman with the accent ask if their were members of the towns Unions in the audiance. The biggest savings we can get are for those union members to do what is right and lower the percentage of health care costs we, the taxpayers in Framingham, cover. Something tells me no cop, fireman or teacher in town is going to willingly give that benefit up.
I like your ideas Jim. School choice I did see come up, they talked about the health care issue for our unions, so that was mentioned, but I did not hear anything about cutting the overtime budget for police and fire. I know this was just the beginning, but I hope that at least makes it to being discussed.
I have also asked on several occasions for copies of the school budget, as well as other town budgets. I have 11 emails requesting that information I have sent, and not one response. I am not one of the nutcases in town, I am a town meeting member, and a democrat, so there is no hidden reason for them to not answer me. They just don’t want anyone to know where the money is going. That, my friends, makes me very nervous.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I was not impressed with any of our Selectmen last night. Two of them are up for reelection. They are going to have to show me some leadership or some balls if they want to earn my vote. Laura Lee is so busy being polite and respectful that she has no time to actually get any answers. Which brings me to another point. If the selectmen don’t understand this stuff and have to ask questions, who the hell is running the show and making the decisions? I hope this town is starting at least to understand how gloomy the future is looking. The leaders we need to take us through the next few years of terrible deficits and cutting of what use to be considered necessary services are not the same leaders you elect when times are good. All of our selectmen were elected during the good times. We need a different set of skills for the people to lead us now.
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