Hola!  Been awhile.  Ima ramble a bit.  Skip to the next paragraph if you don't like it.  Been busy all on the business/family side.  Not much going on for the Council right now which is a blessing because all hell is breaking loose elsewhere!  "Winter" has been a complete embarrassment.  It snowed for 2 days last week and the grass was still green.  I'm going to tempt fate and declare the entire affair concluded.  I'm not cycling much but I am running every day.  I'll start yoga in about a week.  I'm in no rush to torture myself in that fashion but if I'm to actually survive the rides that I'm signed up for, that core strength will be crucial to my avoiding injury.  So far I've got the Diabetes 100 miler in early June and the old Bike Virginia in late June.  6 days and somewhere around 400-500 miles.  In the mountains.

Sooo….as you may have read elsewhere the Council is working its way through our annual CIP discussions.  For the past several years this has been a pretty cut and dried affair as we had a CIP that funded only the most critical of needs and some years it was $0.  Well, you can't have capital infrastructure and not maintain it or else…welll…you won't have it.  I've seen elsewhere and also heard the Mayor mention at our Town Hall meeting that a tax increase of 30 cents will be required to fund the CIP.  I'm not sure where this figure is coming from.  I haven't seen or heard a proposal to this effect.  The Staff proposal is 10 cents (general fund) over 3 years as indicated on page 28 of this presentation.  Not sure if others are lobbying for a larger tax increase or what but I can't support that.  Hell, I don't know what I feel about the current CIP proposal until we work our way through more of it.  I know that I'm not at 0 cents and I'm probably not at 10 cents but it's too early to tell.  That's why we have a staff proposal: they're our experts and we expect them to make recommendations!  For those of you grousing about the staff proposal, recall that the Council gave no direction to the staff on how much the CIP program was to cost so it's a pretty pure proposal based on expertise.

So, having a CIP Summit at my house next Sunday afternoon from 2-4.  We've got 6 slots for those who want to get together and kick it around.  As usual, you need to have some idea of what you're talking about.  Go look through the cip stuff on manassascity.org/future and get yourself up to speed.  Email me: andy@harrover.com if you're interested in attending.  For those of you who were trapped on the "Sunny" couch last year, you'll be relieved to know that we now have blinds!