The mark up meeting went until about 11:00 last night. 6 hours makes for a long meeting. At the end of that, the Council did come up with a budget proposal as follows:
101.5 cent tax rate
9 cent fire levy
These numbers represent a 6.46% increase in the budget. At this level, it is a budget I can believe in as includes at least parts of each big ticket item people were interested in. There are 2 ICE positions, 1 patrol officer, 1 financial analyst for the PD, 1 fire chief and several fire fighters (5).
Manassas Next made it through but with a reduction of $75k to the Economic Development initiative. This was at my suggestion as the City staff has indicated that they have no capacity to make new things happen right now. This seriously weakens the initiative but the City is not in a position to add more staff right now so that is the way it goes. On the bright side, the Schools initiative and the Battle street remake went through. Thanks to the School Board Chair and Vice Chair for their support last night and many thanks to my peers on the Council for supporting the initiative.
April 10, 2008 at 2:44 pm
So Andy, the assistant for the Fire Chief and the 8 additional EMT/Firefighter positions propsed for FY09 didn’t make it? Only what Council approved several weeks ago (sans the assistant)?
April 10, 2008 at 3:35 pm
I believe the assistant did make it.
April 11, 2008 at 8:11 pm
Will the full budget request be provided to the woefully failing public school system? Schools that allow kids to have sex while at school should not receive any additional money until they can provide that will not happen again. Schools that allow child molesters to teach children, should not have any sort of budget until it can show competent non criminal teachers can be hired.
Instead, we reward the school system with even more of our money. Yup, that makes for a good incentive plan for the schools to improve.