Budget Looney Toons.
What's up, Doc? CEO Bug's wags at Alderman Fudd and Supervisor Porky, brandishing his carrot like Gracho Marx's cigar. The he drops into Edward G. Robinson. "Now see here, you earmarks. We tossed you guys out, see. We gave you the big n-O. What part of N-O don't you get, see?"
Fudd, chuckling bashfully, whispers, "Welw, you see, Mistew Bugs, we awways thwow the Executive's budgets back with ouwr changes. We can't wubbew stamp 'em or the votews would think we wewen't doing ouwr job's."
It seems like forever since we have seen reasonable spending in a [Brown] County budget. Actually, it's been only a couple of years, but I'm speaking historically. Exec. Kelso seems to understand better than her predecessors that folks have been pinched in the pocketbook for so long, a 2.2% levy hike sounds like Heaven.
Don't get me wrong. A 2.2% levy hike is perhaps the absolute best anyone can do, given political realities. But isn't anyone else dreaming of a white Christmas, so to speak, when a freeze is really a freeze? When the levy is actually frozen, not the rate of levy grawth? When hell freezes over?
Seems like mostly good things are in order, perhaps with a request for candor's sake, that politicians stop touting levy RATE decreases, which means precisely nothing. Levy rate drops have been a curtain for may county/city Wiz to hide behind.
While it is clear that the County Exec. and the [Green Bay] Mayor are not hiding behind that curtain, they have done the REAL THING, slowed the underlying levy growth. It seems to have taken a state mandate to do it. This is a chance for our top civil servants to go Madison one better and beat the statutory "freeze." They have got to turn back Fudd and Porky, who have not held the line on spending, and apply traditional political chicanery of using ever-rising property values to heroically blather about holding down the lavy rate.
The politics of budgets is a cartoon of polemic distortion, Foghorn Leghorn struttin' 'round the barnyard, "AH say, ah say, son, who's takin' care of our beloved civil servants while the taxpayers are having their dues suspended? Ah say, what'll happen to all o' the and the salt of the earth folks they serve? The sky is fallin', son! I tell ya, run for the hills!"
Well over 40% of the entire budget goes to Human Services. The salt of the earth will be cared for, as well as the salt of the road. Most of that is state mandated. We couldn't cut them even if we wanted.
If you're sick of the Budget Looney Toons because they're just not funny, call your city councilman or county supervisor and them if they signed the no new taxes pledge of if they vant to raise your taxes now. The 2007 Budgets are holding the line on spending, below growth plus inflation. See http://www.co.brown.wi.us/ for entire script.
Fellow taxpayers, the fur has yet to fly on unfunded pensions and benfits. If we don't have civil servants willing to barter with the proverbial incumbents, Fudd and Porky, the sky will fall indeed. We don't want to make national news, like Florence School District a while back, being the first city to be forced into bankruptcy, or worse, state control. We're so far under that thumb already, we've got the imprint on our wallets.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Richard Parins, President Brown County Taxpayers Association
Fudd, chuckling bashfully, whispers, "Welw, you see, Mistew Bugs, we awways thwow the Executive's budgets back with ouwr changes. We can't wubbew stamp 'em or the votews would think we wewen't doing ouwr job's."
It seems like forever since we have seen reasonable spending in a [Brown] County budget. Actually, it's been only a couple of years, but I'm speaking historically. Exec. Kelso seems to understand better than her predecessors that folks have been pinched in the pocketbook for so long, a 2.2% levy hike sounds like Heaven.
Don't get me wrong. A 2.2% levy hike is perhaps the absolute best anyone can do, given political realities. But isn't anyone else dreaming of a white Christmas, so to speak, when a freeze is really a freeze? When the levy is actually frozen, not the rate of levy grawth? When hell freezes over?
Seems like mostly good things are in order, perhaps with a request for candor's sake, that politicians stop touting levy RATE decreases, which means precisely nothing. Levy rate drops have been a curtain for may county/city Wiz to hide behind.
While it is clear that the County Exec. and the [Green Bay] Mayor are not hiding behind that curtain, they have done the REAL THING, slowed the underlying levy growth. It seems to have taken a state mandate to do it. This is a chance for our top civil servants to go Madison one better and beat the statutory "freeze." They have got to turn back Fudd and Porky, who have not held the line on spending, and apply traditional political chicanery of using ever-rising property values to heroically blather about holding down the lavy rate.
The politics of budgets is a cartoon of polemic distortion, Foghorn Leghorn struttin' 'round the barnyard, "AH say, ah say, son, who's takin' care of our beloved civil servants while the taxpayers are having their dues suspended? Ah say, what'll happen to all o' the and the salt of the earth folks they serve? The sky is fallin', son! I tell ya, run for the hills!"
Well over 40% of the entire budget goes to Human Services. The salt of the earth will be cared for, as well as the salt of the road. Most of that is state mandated. We couldn't cut them even if we wanted.
If you're sick of the Budget Looney Toons because they're just not funny, call your city councilman or county supervisor and them if they signed the no new taxes pledge of if they vant to raise your taxes now. The 2007 Budgets are holding the line on spending, below growth plus inflation. See http://www.co.brown.wi.us/ for entire script.
Fellow taxpayers, the fur has yet to fly on unfunded pensions and benfits. If we don't have civil servants willing to barter with the proverbial incumbents, Fudd and Porky, the sky will fall indeed. We don't want to make national news, like Florence School District a while back, being the first city to be forced into bankruptcy, or worse, state control. We're so far under that thumb already, we've got the imprint on our wallets.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Richard Parins, President Brown County Taxpayers Association
posted by John Q Cheesehead | 10:06 PM
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