Posted on 11/13/2008 4:53:04 AM PST by doodad
Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin said Wednesday the city will have its employees cut their hours — and pay — by 10 percent each week to help weather an expected budget shortfall of $50 million to $60 million. The pay and hour cuts affect 4,600 city employees.
She also said the city will have to cut back some services, dip into its reserves and make other personnel moves.
(Excerpt) Read more at ajc.com ...
Democrats always prefer to ‘slice the pie’ instead of ‘growing the pie’. The fact of the matter is that you simply can’t ‘slice’ your way to prosperity.
Wow, they'll be working for FREE by the end of January!
What a deal!
Many, many cities will face this same scenario due to lower tax revenue. Housing values fall, revenue falls. Their budgets are based on taking in a certain amount of revenue, so if there’s a housing downturn that revenue can fall significantly.
This is why the fed shouldn’t be handing out bailouts to cities because most of them will have the same problems, bailout one, and everybody things they can get a handout instead of working to trim their budgets.
The problem is that Atlanta is run as a minority jobs program with abysmal return on investment. I used to work for a company that had a large contract with the city for engineering services (because they can’t do anything complicated themselves). It was eye opening shall we say.
The good news in this is that we may gain the impetus to wrest the airport away from city management (and cronyism; ie “disadvantaged” contracts given to firms run by black millionares) and place it under state control where it belongs.
Google the contract fiasco on the fill dirt for the new runway if you really want to be disgusted.
Liberals were squealing like stuck pigs about it, but I never heard the outcome. Did that ever happen?
Look into how any city in the country is being run where the "leadership" is primarily DemocRats and you'll see a similar picture. There is nothing unique about the DemocRat control in Atlanta....
We have three new cities in the northern part of Fulton County. Sandy Springs, the one you are remembering, John’s Creek and Milton. There has long been a drive to recreate old Milton County where most of these new cities are and completely cut off the majority of funds to the racists that run Fulton County.
In retaliation, the county quickly approved section 8 and habitat housing in the new city areas before they incorporated and have destroyed parts of them. I live nearby to my dismay and we have seen crime skyrocket. Lots of Katrina trash installed.
Thanks for the response. I do recall the talk of recreating the old Milton county. Is that going to go through?
It will not happen in our lifetime I am afraid. Due to the political climate in our county and the fact that an amendment to the state constitution would be required. We are only allowed so many counties (and there are way too many in GA as it is)under the current constitution. No other county would dream of merging with another to allow it even though some counties are pretty underpopulated.
I used to live in Atlanta and still return there to practice in the Federal courts from time to time. My observations about the City and Fulton County first, then the Milton County issue.
When Mayor Franklin took office one of the big consulting firms offered to do a benchmark analysis, gratis, to help the incoming mayor understand how things stood. I seem to recall the results were that compared to comparable cities of the same size - the City of Atlanta had a workforce 30% larger than other cities, but that total payroll was 22% below the comparable benchmark value. In other words - Atlanta had a lot of people who were paid relatively little. If you have had any interaction with the city government (zoning, planning, courts, etc.) you can understand that the city payroll has become a patronage army of ignorant and unhelpful people.
Fulton County government is much the same way. As an example, I recall about 1 year ago dealing with the Fulton Probate court, filing a will for safekeeping on behalf of a client with the Clerk of the Probate Court. I was led through a labyrinth of dated office cubicles to a spot where I was instructed to wait as the clerk went behind a partition. Moments later I heard a typewriter (!) as a form was being completed as part of the process. I thought that was typical – an army of low skilled municipal employees, using essentially no technology (hardly even low technology). The IT revolution has yet to break into the bureaucracy of the Fulton County Courts (or the DA’s office) and an encounter with those organizations or other branches of Fulton Government will leave you scratching your head (have I just entered a time warp?)
On the issue of Milton County – I think the best out for those in what would be the reconstituted Milton County would be to find two counties in south GA and essentially bribe them, via contracted payments, to merge and get the # of counties issue out of the way. It has to be an efficient outcome. The money a reconstituted Milton could save (or at least more wisely and beneficially spend) would have to be more than enough to cover payments to one of those godforsaken, bum-f*** counties down near Valdosta or Waycross.
Ah, I see you have indeed been blessed to have to work with the local establishment.
My own experiences were with the failing sewage and water infrastructure. How those people ever got a job that required a basic understanding of excrement flowing downhill I will never know. They were more concerned with the number of black faces in our office and stated it very plainly.
Lucky me, the wife and I get to go down to the city to get CCW permits this month. They don’t let us in old Milton County have any such service anymore, not to mention early voting. But, they sure do cash my tax check with an efficiency that would be the marvel of a rocket scientist.
We need a running list of the number of occurrences of this statement around the country. This is so freakin’ depressing, predictable, and pathetic.
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