I am suggesting there is a way out under several proposals. 1) Cut your expenses to match revenues. 2) Take pay cuts (85% of the City’s budget)now (deflationary depression is coming. 3) Subvention of state revenues geared toward emerging from bankruptcy. 4) Sell derivative assets that are not recognized and not booked (where is the CPA industry or GASB???). 5) Financial statements should disclose the 15 year history of the pension’s UAAL on the CAFR supplemental schedule so everyone (residents, taxpayers and investors) understands what brought the bankruptcy to fruition. 6) Privatize services under a cost benefit study and 7) Pray (humbleness brings solutions.

Well run government is a business. Add politics to the equation and over time it is like mixing oil and water.

Warning, this site is as bad as fox news but call themselves a non-profit. Don’t give them any money.

* Participatory Budgeting (PB) has been around since 1989 – NOT 2005- and was first started in Porto Alegre, Brazil.
* I worked with my three former colleagues (who voted for PB in 2012) to approve the first city-wide PB process in North America – not “squeaking” PB through with the PB Project.
* The $300,000 budget to staff and administer PB Vallejo has nothing to do with providing basic services such as law enforcement. The roll up costs (e.g., salary, benefits, pension) for one police officer in the City of Vallejo costs ~ $250,000 per year. So, the PB admin budget could potentially allow for the city to hire one more police officer. Hardly a silver bullet. And the sales tax revenue used to fund PB expires in 2022, so it’s really not a long-term, sustainable source of funds for ongoing expenses such as hiring employees.
* PB was never intended to “surmount Vallejo’s structural challenges.” It was intended to take ~ 2% of the total city budget and give it back to the people to decide how to spend on a whole variety of quality of life projects, which it did and continues to do. PB is not a “failed experiment,” because it’s moving forward next year and, again, it was never intended to do the things that this article tries to profess.
* To read the last paragraph connecting the school bond to the casino proposals, you’d think there was a correlation and the school district is the one that decides development proposals. The school bond was put forward by the School District with its own governing board, because of its failing infrastructure. The casino proposals are before the City Council – a separate governing body from the school board – as a result of a Request for Qualifications (RFQ). Anyone can respond to a RFQ that doesn’t mean the city has “turned its attention” to casinos because it’s “hungry for cash.” It means casino developers responded to the RFQ and the city has a responsibility to respond to those proposals.

Lastly, this story does a complete dis-service to the real issue and sobering conversation that must continue to occur in the State of California: the need for ongoing public employee pension reform. That should be the focus of this story – not all the other distracting sub-plots that were outlined.

We will harvest their organs with garden tools. Think of that these holidays.

Don’t harvest Teddy’s…might get Ebola.

Rex has always been in a nutshell.

15 American cities with that story

39,932 to go

lmao
teabag trolls ™

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/generic-drug-prices-skyrocketing/

Wasn’t really meant for you “Fast Eddie” because I understand your fears.
Its hard to read or think when you’re curled up in a dark room in the fetal position cowering in fear. The constant thoughts of the impending doom of “carbon loading and climate change” can just be too much to bear sometimes.
Speaking of carbon loading, I think its time I shut down my commentary and venture out to find a nice plate of pasta with some toasted sourdough baguettes and a nice glass of Chianti. Doom on, Teddy!