Monday, July 2, 2007

Parks Spending And Broken Promises

When voters were asked to approve a parks millage increase, they were told the general fund contribution to parks spending would not be reduced more than the general fund contributions to other expenses.

But parks were shortchanged by $1.4 million: streets are defined as parks, the mayor and council, city attorney, city finance department and city administrator each had budget increases of over 15% to 23%. But not parks; and there was a non-public millage change on October, 2006.

Additionally, $900,000 was spent to remove 10% of the ash trees. The city administrator's (Roger Fraser) budget allocates $1400 per tree. more ...

2 comments:

rawitten said...

Please provide information about who runs and writes this blog. Also, you do not cite any sources for your information so that your claims can be verified. Please do so.

Ed S said...

The author(s) of articles are displayed at the top of the full article (click on "more" for the full article).

Several sources are referenced in the articles. Some, like the city audits and council resolutions, are available on the city website. Others, such as the full detail report for fiscal years 2008 and 2009 from the city's BRASS budget software were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

A mission statement with more background will be added soon but the short version is that the blog will use volunteer citizen reporters to provide in-depth coverage of a wide range of local issues.