Kudos to Wallingford Mayor Bill Dickinson on his recent budget proposal for the next fiscal year, which begins July 1. He kept the overall spending increase near zero and makes it clear that either through concessions or layoffs the town needs to contract its workforce or cut the amount spent on school and town hall staff. As a result, the average homeowner will only have to pay an additional $59 in property taxes next year.
The unions have a difficult choice. But it is one that many in the private sector have already had to decide. Do they keep the salary and benefits they are due through their contracts and sacrifice jobs? Or do they save jobs and give up salary and/or benefits? It is a very difficult and personal decision that every union member will have to wrestle with. I empathize. The unfortunate reality is that with lots of taxpayers out of work or earning less, there just is no way the town can afford to pay the same amount to its employees next year. This is not a slap to the face of longtime, loyal town and school employees. This is the result of a very real economic downtown.
Finally, with this proposal Dickinson has shown the political skills that have kept him in office for more than a quarter century. Unless the Town Council finds something I missed, there isn’t any room for political maneuvering that would hurt the mayor’s re-election chances.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
.jpg)
5 comments:
Hi Ralph,
This is why the Mayor is continually elected by the vast majority of voters in Wallingford. He governs on whats best for the town and its taxpayers. He not pre occupied about getting himself re-elected. Its easy to make speeches on what we should do in these tough ecomic times. Real leaders make the hard desicions.
Hi Ralph and Darrell,
(Long time no chat by the way Darrell – nice to hear from you).
You guys are certainly entitled to your opinions but I'll have to respectfully disagree.
I posted a lengthy entry on this subject over on my blog and I won't enter the entire thing here.
If you want to read it you can via
http://jasonzandri.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!AA559A45099B2EBD!5465.entry
The long and short of it is there are definitely ways the mayor and the town could be going about doing things better and more efficiently which translates to saving money and holding down costs while maintaining service levels, perhaps even increasing them.
Sometimes governing on what’s best for the town and its taxpayers doesn't mean doing without and making do with less. Sometimes less is just less.
Anyone can make cuts during difficult times if they are smart enough to realize that must occur. That's not leading in my opinion - that's status quo; everyone is doing this. When you follow what everyone else is doing that is not leading.
Everyone reading this blog knows this is not the year for more expenditures so in my mind's eye anyone could have taken the action to hold the line and cut services to keep taxes in place.
How much money has the mayor cost us over the years by not maintaining other costs, not leveraging technology to reduce costs and improve services and so forth? How much less could we be paying in taxes today for these things if the foresight was had?
Anyone can make cuts during lean times – service levels drop and we lose amenities. (We never get those lost services back by the way – no one ever wants to spend more even in the good times). The end result is you pay no more (or marginally more) in taxes but are getting less in services. That’s like saying – I cut the service on my monthly cable bill (dropped HBO as an example) to offset their rate increase so yes you’re spending the same but you are getting less. Planning ahead might offer you ways to offset that cost and keep the service level. In the above example, leveraging the ability to bundle phone, cellular and cable services might lower your overall costs which keeps all the payments the same and all the services at the same level. No service loss – no more cost.
We do not do that in Wallingford – we do not plan that way.
Jason,
P-u-leaze. Give credit where it is due. While other municipalities are calling for significant increases in taxes along with reductions in services, Wallingford shines through. Your credibility here is quite strained. Even if Dickinson proposed to REDUCE taxes, you and your fellow Democrats would still be whining. Who will be the next Democratic victim to be trounced by Bill? If he is s-o-o-ooooo bad, why don't YOU run against him? NOT!
If you took the time to read my blog posting you would have seen the following:
“I’ll start off by saying there are many things the mayor does well. I don’t agree with everything he does and I don’t have to. He doesn’t get everything 100% right but he’s human and I don’t expect him to.”
First paragraph, so I did give credit first where it was due. Clearly you didn’t bother to read it but rather decided to go on the anonymous attack – so bold of you. More important for you to go on the attack anonymously and go after someone who doesn't agree with your way of thinking.
I didn’t attack Ralph or Darrell but rather indicated respectfully that I didn’t agree with them. No such courtesy from you.
As far as "you and your fellow Democrats" I speak only for myself - I let others speak for themselves too.
Keep hiding behind "anonymous" - we need more of you folks trying to not make a difference and attacking anyone with opinions counter to yours. God forbid we continue to do that and raise all this anarchy and question authority.
Let's face some facts - if this administration were in place when electricity was being rolled out there's a high probability that we might still not have it today. You can laugh at the ridiculousness of the statement all you want but think about it seriously.
As far as you comments about running for mayor myself – I can’t afford the pay cut so all you anonymous folks out there are safe from the non-threat of my taking a swing at it.
In closing, I never necessarily suggested the mayor needed to be replaced – I simply indicated that he needs to think a little more progressively, a little more proactively and outside of the box he’s been operating in over the past 24 years – the world is not the same place anymore.
As a matter of fact I indicated in my post “there are definitely ways he as a mayor and we as a town could be going about doing things better and more efficiently which translates to saving money and holding down costs while maintaining service levels, perhaps even increasing them.”
The future will never function like the past and any person, municipality or business that tries to continually move forward in that fashion only survives so long.
Wallingford is running out of headroom.
My kudos to the mayor were confined to this budget proposal. I agree with Jason that if the mayor had been pursuing more out of the box ideas in recent years we might be in better shape to ride out this economic downturn. Also, don't forget it was the Town Council Democrats, not the mayor, that cut the current budget. When they did, the mayor complained.
I'm hoping that this week the Town Council will propose its own cost-saving ideas. I think regionalizing some of the services each town delivers is worth exploring. To date, the mayor hasn't been very enthusiastic. Maybe that will change.
Post a Comment