I’m a shade late with this but there is a City Council meeting tonight at Round elementary.  It starts at 7:00.  There are short presentations by each department and then a time where citizens can address the council.  If you’ve got something to say, come on out and lay it on us!

If you have ever wondered how Manassas compares against other cities and counties in Virginia in terms of spending, this website has the answers. FAIR WARNING though: if you’re an immediate gratification junkie, it ain’t for you. This isn’t something you’re going to plow thru in a couple of minutes as the data is in excel spreadsheets and not terribly well analyzed.

For you gratification junkies, here’s a little taste. In 2005 Manassas spent:

118% of average (for cities in VA) on Law enforcement/traffic control

135% of average (for cities in VA) on school instruction

171% of average (for cities in VA) on school administration

53% of average (for cities in VA) on Parks and Rec

48% of average (for cities in VA) on Planning & Community development

207% of average (for cities in VA) on legislative (interestingly, ManPark spends 267%)

8% of average on environmental management which is about a dime for each of us

Haven’t really figured this all out yet. I am not surprised that the City is above 100% of average in many catagories – people and all the stuff they require to get their job done costs more here than it does in southside and tidewater. There must be some way to normalize the values to adjust for cost of living. Another thing I noticed in digging through the data is that I’m not sure that all municipalities allot their expenditures in similar fashions. Some of the numbers are so different amongst different cities that they must be alloting similar expenditures to different accounts.
Maybe I’ll jam it into a database for a little analysis.
Update 1 – 2006 numbers should be available in final form in about 30-60 days.