My Side of the Fence

The danger isn't going too far. It's that we don't go far enough.

Page 297 of 403

Advertised Tax Rate

Last night, after 5 hours of meetings on public safety and utilities, the Council decided to advertise a tax rate of $1.38 for the “main” tax rate and 15.3 cents for the fire levy.  What this means is that the rate can go lower than the advertised rate but not higher.

The average residential tax bill, including the levy, would decrease $415.

Sometime in the next day or so I’ll try to summarize the cuts made to the budget and put this in context…

Council Meeting update

Good Council meeting last night.  We had a public hearing on the budget and 3 people showed up.  These are the first people at any of our budget meetings.

The Chief of Police released his 2008 complaint and commendation data and here’s an excerpt:

61,791 calls for service last year.   Before somebody points out there there are only 40k people in Manassas, I would offer that my understanding of “call for service” is that it is not always an actual call.  It’s just about anything the PD does in pursuit of its mission – if a patrol officer sees an unlocked door and checks it out, that counts.

16 complaints.  All were investigated and 9 were not sustained.  The other 7 “resulted in various forms of corrective action or discipline.”

The department recieved 68 written letters of commendation and many telephone calls of appreciation.

The PD made 2,228 criminal arrests, issued 5,441 traffic tickets and wrote 6,799 parking tickets.

I am pleased with the Chief’s committment to releasing this data to the public every year.  It contributes to the level of trust in the community and it illustrates that our department performs at a very high level.

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