Praise and Blame: The Bloggers' Perspective

Our Friday morning radio appearance with WGVA’s Ted Baker covered a lot of ground. We led off with discussion of the 2009 City Budget which was carried by Council with no tax increase. This year’s budget is a legitimate “0%” tax increase budget. People’s taxes are not going up. Contrast this with the 2008, which saw no increase in the tax rate, but an over 7% increase in property assessments, resulting in most Genevans paying at least 7% more property tax. That budget (which Capraro and Augustine voted against) brought unwarranted praise for Council.

Capraro went on to extend guarded praise for the new City Manager, Matt Horn, who, in contrast to his predecessor, created a transparent budget process that insisted Council articulate its priorities and responded with a responsible spending plan that tracked with those priorities--without raising taxes!

Of course, in the context of a declining economy, Capraro said he is "not optimistic" that revenue projections--particularly sales tax and state aid--will be as high as anticipated and again stressed the need to look at budgeting solutions other than future property tax increases, such as shared services and alternative sources of revenue.

We were then given a riddle, "How many councils does it take to tear down an old gas station?" We'll answer this more fully in a future post, but the short answer is: It only takes one Council acting in good faith, in the public eye, and with adequate funding to implement its decision, either way.

Ted then asked us about the lakefront plan, as proposed. While it is absolutely clear that the community has reject Building 12, the most important point is that Council needs get the process gets back on track with regard to weighing community values against special interests. We indicated a way that Council could discuss and act on the plan in a responsible, praise-worthy fashion instead of bringing upon themselves the blame of the community for letting outside forces unduly alter the outcome.

Listen to this, and our former radio appearances by visiting the NoStringsGeneva Radio Archive.