Back in June, Borough Council finally realized that a trash fee increase would be required. Based on the adopted budget, the trash department was running a deficit in excess of $80,000 in the first half of the year. The information in June indicated that an increase to around $73 per quarter for the balance of the year would be needed to balance the trash budget.
Faced with that information, what did Council do? It voted to increase the trash fee to $73 for the third quarter only.
Guess what: the fourth quarter starts on October 1. The next scheduled Council meeting is October 9. Absent Council action, the trash fee will drop back to $55.25 for the fourth quarter.
The reduction would be nice, if it were not for the red ink it will likely spill.
What were Council Members Ciruelos (Chair of Utilities Health and Sanitation) and Kirkner (Chair of Finance) thinking? Where were the Manager and the Finance Director?
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3 comments:
The Post-Facto burn my britches is really the kicker for me:
Let's rally around pay as you throw! No one rallied - why? Because Mascaro was in play. Outcry, including myself was a resounding "Dump pay as you throw". Next, Pay as you throw is knocked off the tabled.
So I'm suggesting that had a little homework* been done regarding the contract with the union, then pay as you throw would still have been on the table. It might have been accepted, and in my case certainly cheaper than what the trash bill is now.
*Homework in some languages means "do your job". Thesarus: Find the bills, pay the bills, find the paper work...
I assume then that what will happen will be that our trash fees will have been raised 3 times this year. That would be the one time in the beginning of the year, this recent time, and the time in October when they realized they are screwed again. Am I missing a time????
The hardest thing in American politics is making a decision and it appears that these guys are no exception.
Ignorance, timimg, decision making.
Mascaro was never in play under the well-covered skull cap of the major domo and the minor digirolomo. North side council person Messina said at the last council meeting that they had opened negotations with the union in September of 2006. In November of 2006 the RFP for an outsourced contract was put in play but somehow we are told we should believe the union workers and their local representative were not aware even though negotiations were begun? Is that ignorance or bad management - if you accept that you are not being told a lie? Messina and Digirolomo were never going to give up the ability to manage the cash flash flow of a million plus dollars to writing checks to Mascaro. That was never in play. Pay as you throw was another distraction. The whole point of all this is to have cash flow in accounts signed off on by the long time political companions Messina and Digirolomo. Forget personalities like Cassidy and Cohen. Forge peace summits. Forget fancy schemes that are supposed to be run by a group who can't find invoices for three months. Look at where the money goes, comes from and stays.
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