Funny you should mention it, Anonymous -- May 6, 2009 11:08 AM
It would appear that the City of Park Ridge is far leaner, if not meaner, than the reality you cited as being "roughly 70-80% of all public sector budgets are personnel (salary & benefits)."
Cutting personnel may be the lean, mean, dividend-providing machine that works for Wall Street, but we think it sucks as a first method of budget management for the City of Park Ridge, residents, and our workers.
Still, we feel nothing is off the table. Nothing. And nothing includes the wine and cheese crowds' love of spending time fawning over the merits of impressionist contributions to the human condition, along with consideration of whether or not the City should continue subsidizing 75% of alley paving projects.
We encourage everyone to spend some time with your money -- or at least with the City's plans for it on paper.
If you've never been through the City budget, here is a good place to start.
May 6, 2009
Spend Some Time With Your Money!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
46 comments:
woo hoo! get me some popcorn and let me pull up a chair to review the budget.
I completely disagree with the aldermonkey who wants to put the funding back to the community organizations. Take care of our city workers FIRST.
Workers should get most of the money from taxes. We should probably raise taxes so the workers can have more money.
And right on about Wall Street. Forget those greedy scumbags. All they do is make money. Workers make things that we all need.
It's time we pay up for our workers. Dave's gonna bring the change.
There are alot of greedy scumbags on Wall Street that did a hella fine job screwing up our economy with their shenanigans and manipulations. Right now I have no confidence in anything Wall Street advises.
Part of the fear in the economy right now is workers losing jobs or being afraid of losing jobs and that is alot of what is causing people to pull back and not spend more than necessary.
I agree with the pru. Let's try and keep our people working here. We will all be better off for it.
Wow, looking at the previous comments we're going to have to change our town motto to:
"Workers of the World Unite, and come work in Park Ridge."
God knows I will not defend Wall Street but one thing I know for sure. Wall Street is not responsible for the budget issues we have in Park Ridge.
12:29 and 1:19,
Are you saying that our city employees are underpaid? What facts do you have to support your statements?
Get the net, we got a crazy!
Looks like someone didn't take their meds today. Every body just knows that the workers deserve more than the bankers. They are better people than bankers! That's my proof. Get the net already.
Looks like I will be updating my resume to emphasis what a nice guy I am - after all "better people" should get the money. Let's all just ignore things like revenue generated.
Can I ask who gets to decide who is a "better person?" Seems like there is a great deal of bitching about what teachers make. Are they not nice people?
Lastly, as someone who comes from a family (and extended family) of bankers, not all of them are bad people.
Based on your post, I suggest you use the net on yourself.
Wow! who escaped form the looney bin? Just look at the news. Its Wall Street and the bankers that used capitalism to bring down our countries. Now all the bankers want the little guy to bail them out and work for nothing. Its the workers that do it all good for economy. Duhh. Get a dart gun, we got a rabid banker on the loose.
Looks like the wall street bankers are unfairly being beaten up. I bet it was ok though when you were getting nice healthy returns on your funds and financing all those extras...then they were heroes.
He makes a statement that workers deserve most of the money. "Every body just knows that the workers deserve more than the bankers". His basic argument is "bankers bad, workers good".
Lets blame someone!!! Grab your torch and pitch fork!! The fact is that the vast majority of bankers had absolutely no influence on what has happened over the last several years. His argument is nothing more then generalizing.
Good God. Seriously people.
Is this some kind of Wall Street vs. Workers proxy war because none of you are willing to read the budget documents for your own City government and engage in meaningful discussion about your own City budget comprised largely of your own tax dollars?
Come on people.
focus...focus...focus...
I have to agree with May 6, 2009 4:06 PM.
Their wages may not be the absolute best, but city workers already have guaranteed defined benefit pensions that are far better than a large number of the taxpayers who pay their salaries.
Unlike those taxpayers, city workers never have to worry about their jobs being outsourced to Mexico or Bangalore. In fact, I'd be willing to wager that the termination rate for city workers over the past 10 years is way below the rate for private sector employees.
And from what I've seen of the "managers" in every department, I'd seriously question whether we are even getting full value for what we're currently paying the employees. How we go about proving or disproving that, however, is a different story.
Everything (including jobs, wages and benefits) needs to be on the table it this budget is going to get balanced.
Anon 6:58 you sound like a nazi fascist! I bet youd love to fire the hard working people that make things work. PRU admin is right, get a grip and pay your taxes for the working people for once in your life!
6:58 p.m., you are right. These days, a defined-benefit pension and excellent, affordable health care are two things most of us can't even dream of any more, and for many, a decent salary with guaranteed increases for OK work is another fantasy. Do we have hard-working public employees? Of course. Do we have managers who manipulate information to get what's convenient and beneficial to them instead of to the employees and even more, instead of to the taxpayer-employer? You bet. And whenever a cut in some entitlement is suggested, the answer is some guile-laden response such as "well, we can always cut police protection" or some such, guaranteed to be something that nobody would accept, so the conversation moves on and the bullet of reality is dodged again. When revenues are down due to economic disaster and/or the complicity of managers and elected officials, who tightens up Not staff. "We'll just cut services" was always Tim Skankey's mantra. How about, deliver the same services with less in order to protect your stable three hots and a cot? Do more with less? Or do more even with the same? Heaven forfend!
as far as "managers" in every department....just realize they have people to answer to. I am none of those people but can imagine that the little guy actually suggests something.....then the foreman/an/or/ supervisor suggests that......then the director or super-intendent suggests that..... then that gets nixed..... then questions come about why we have so-and-so problem......and we try and say that we reported that but we are sent back to fix the problem and the cycle will always continue because we don't listen first hand to the problems and do something then before we talk about it more.This town needs to stop thinking so much and start doing more! Don't look to cut back.....we need more services/and or help.
"Its not how you start out - but how you finish".
By:
Howard Frmark
Mayor
City of Park Ridge
In the last couple of weeks, I have spent some time reviewing budget docs. From an expense standpoint and benchmarked against other local communities, it is true that PR operates a lean budget on a per resident basis. In other words, we are pretty darn cost effective.
So let's be clear here as to why we are screwed right now. Revenues were off by over $5MM last year. Why? Projections, especially for the Uptown TIF, were WAY OFF. And we are now going to suffer thru the repercussions of an overly aggressive TIF proposal that was not properly validated and most likely inflated to get approval on a plan that would have otherwise FAILED and never built to the scale it is today. Along the way, other really dumb decisions were made (primarily by Howard) that just added to the revenue gap.
Interesting that you don't hear the city talk about ideas for revenue growth. We need that too, along with expense cuts. For one thing, I'll tell you they're not working hard on this. One new business owner told me the city gave him the run around when he started. He nearly gave up on his plans. They are STILL restricting him from some changes to expand his business, which would ultimately create some additional sales tax revenue. Hello????
The city council and staff needs to start thinking of our tax dollars as their own. Just as we are doing in our households, they need to make sacrifices, cut expenses, and find ways to make some extra cash on the side until we can all come out of this economic mess. The city put us in this hole; they need to figure it out. We can't be expected to subsidize all the mistakes.
Is there anything in the budget for the increased police protection, traffic enforcement and drug prevention that will come with the hideous casino?
anon 11:19:
Your question points out the difficulty of budgeting. How can they predict exactly how a new casino will translate into revenue for the catagories you describe? There are some who would say that there will be a huge increase in these areas and some who would say the opposite.
Beyond that, it would seem to me that what ever they decide to budget, most of the increase would not take place in this years document. I do not know the exact scheduled opening date for the casino, but they are still very early in the process.
A good bang for the buck-
A lot of City employees perform multiple person jobs on their own.
For example, call the police and ans for the community relations officer, when you get his voice mail prompt and hear what he does, there is like three or four positons. If you call most other cities (I called four) you'll find each position has an individual employee assigned.
In some short conversations with other City employees, this seems to be the norm. I don't know if it is fair to the employees?
In response:
Once the public safety employee retires the city nolonger funds his pay. there is a "co-pay" through the employees years of service. Once out, the pension fund pays the retired employee, not the city payroll.
The bill would be a burden of the pension fund not the City.
Hey 10:50,
It was the ideas of "revenue growth" that started this mess. I have to agree with the previous poster who suggested that "selling" us the uptown tif and it's projected "revenue" was in a nutshell A BUNCH OF HOOEY! Not only has it not panned out it is sinking us even deeper. Park Ridge, for decades survived and even flurished having been almost soley supported by the residednt tax paying dollar. It was only when developers and friendly deals came into play that "revenue growth" became an issue.
Whoa the days of past when "our" tax dollars managed to pay staff, pay for our police and fire, pay to have streets cleaned, pay to have trees trimmed, and all the other wonderfull services. And all without over developement and bullshit revenue projections.
7:45 Anon
Its called multi tasking.
They thrive on it but in the long run.............
we all loose - when you loose an officer to retirement and or for health reasons who manned that position wearing several hats!
Then the position is sometimes left vacant due to a training deficient.
So your back to square one.
Remember...the federal guidelines
say that you can only stretch your officers to a point and still keep your certification.
Doing more with less as they say.
In the final scheme of things..its not how you start out but how you finish.
Thank you.
Excellent article in today's Sun Times regarding pensions,... teacher's pensions in particular. Hope the city council takes a moment to read.........
http://www.suntimes.com/news/brown/1562677,CST-NWS-brown07.article
Further clarification on my original comment re: revenue growth. What I simply meant was stuff like - filling the Uptown spaces, new business incentives, selling off assets/leasing properties we don't already, etc etc etc. Not another "Uptown Taj Mahal" idea. I ain't that dumb.
As they review the budget I would also suggest that they review all public works projects slated for this year and decide if any can be pushed back to help make this years numbers.
As an example, they are in the process of repaving the street in front of my house and for several blocks down. I don't know how they decide what areas get paved (is it a rotation?). I don't know if a contract might have already been in place. Botton line is the street was not that bad at all. I have seen much worse in PR that are not being paved. It had to cost well into the 5 figures, maybe even 6 to do the job and I do not think anyone on my street would have freaked if it had not been done - in fact I, along with my neighbors had no idea they were going to do it.
Anonymous May 7, 2009 4:31 PM
You make a great point. Over the years I have seen streets re-paved that were not as bad as others, which leads me to suspect that the bureaucrats come up with their schedule that is followed irrespective of the relative condition of the streets.
Just like the work that was done last year on the Library lot and Summit, and what's being done now across the street from there. You would have thought that with the last two years of multi-million dollar budget deficits, the geniuses at City Hall might have deferred that work a year or two.
Hard to figure.
1:28
I understand your clarification, but we wouldn't "need" to fill as many empty spaces if it weren't for the "growth and revenue idea". That is my point and clraification.
Want to raise some cash? How about the police ticketing the thousands of drivers who don't stop at the numerous stop signs in our town. In the 15 minutes it takes me to walk my kids to school I could issue a dozen tickets each and every day and I only cross 4 stop signs. I bet we could close the budget gap in no time if the police were intent on tightening up the traffic laws instead of yapping in the church and seinor center parking lots.
Anonymous May 7, 2009 10:17 PM -
How about red light cameras at every street corner. Tickets for everybody!
10:17 PM - And you'll be screaming bloody murder when YOU get one of those tickets. "Bitch bitch bitch....Nothing better to do officer?...bitch bitch bitch...Got your quota for today officer? bitch bitch bitch.....Why don't you catch some real criminals officer?" Get some new material to whine about you pampered, suburban fool.
Be careful just how much you cut
with training...state cert people
will look at that.
You don't want to loose your certification!
anon 10:17:
I do not disagree with your point about people running stop signs. I live on a street that kids use to walk to 2 schools and the 4-way at the corner of my block is a tragedy waiting to happen. That is why, during the red light camera posts I have said put one at my corner (a minority position).
The problem is, your hypothesis that this would solve the budget problem is wrong. The numbers flat out don't work. The reality is that PR receives a small percentage of every "ticket dollar" written, with significant protions goint to other parties (county, state, court system). If you play around with the numbers, assuming $75 per ticket, and 25% going to PR, they would have to write around 300 tickets per day!!!!
12:35 - what's the deal? The poster didn't say s/he would complain if s/he was stopped and got a ticket. It's true that there are a lot of cars that don't stop at stop signs in town. More ticketing would not only bring in revenue, but it might actually make it safer for people to cross the street.
Children are the most important resource for our community (which could use some real diversification in my opinion).
The cops are the problem, not the childre. The children are our future. Let's think alike a community people!
10:41 AM:
"the cops are the problem????" What on earth are you talking about???
Bring on the red light cameras and the revenue they generate! Just be sure to forecast declining revenue over time, as people become aware of the locations and alter their behavior to, what is it, obey the law.
Put them on Higgins, Devon and Touhy and all the routes leading to the Des Plaines casino.
Raising revenue on the backs of traffic scofflaws instead of solely on the homeowners. In some cases the red light runners may be Park Ridge residents. But when the scofflaw is from outside Park Ridge, the City has tapped a new source of revenue.
"It's for the children." "The children are our future."
We've been hearing that propaganda for years, usually when the school district (or some other unit of government) has totally mismanaged its finances and needs to guilt the voters into throwing more money its way.
If we want to do something "for the children," how about showing them the value of getting more out of less, not less out of more?
Here, here, 1:25!!!
anon 12:3
You're the one screaming bloody murder. Get some new meds you disgruntled, suburban lunatic.
May 8, 2009 12:35 AM
This whole debate makes it sound like the only workers in town are government workers. Most of the workers we are talking about are the residents who all are under huge pressure to keep or get a job or a make a fixed income stretch... and have much less to show for a day's work or in the bank than they had 18 months ago.
You want these residents to support a bunch of government employees who hide behind work rules and constitutionally guaranteed benefits that virtually no one else has any more.
In virtually every job category they make more money than their non government counterpart....... plus all the benefits You virtually never see any of them doing any constructive work unless its on overtime.
The only time you see any enthusiasm from any of them is when they head for the barn for extended coffee breaks or line up in a row at a city council meeting to intimidate the alderman and scream for a new library or a new police station with lounges and indoor parking..
Cut the work force 10% just like is going on everywhere else and if that doesn't get the work done then outsource the work to people who will be grateful for the work.....including some who live here and pay the taxes
We don't have to take care of our government workers...they learned how to take care of themselves a long time ago....and to screw the rest of us in the process.
How many of you have or will walk out of a job with a $90-100,000 cost of living adjusted pension?
And the worst part is they think they are worth it.
Look at the turnover in government employees at any agency in PR. There is almost none. Why is that? Because they can't get a better deal any place else and they know it.
Why don't you think about when a Park Ridge government employee of any kind...city, schools or parks... ever did went out of the way to do anything exceptional for you or your family or anyone you know...anyone. I have lived here over 40 years and I do not know of a single example.
Feel sorry for all of your friends who are out there without a safety net and who are really hurting and are scared to death. They can't afford to pay increased fees or red light camera tickets or higher property taxes or higher income taxes or higher sales taxes or higher transfer fees or higher water bills or higher vehicle sticker taxes or higher anything else.
Think about the residents first. Fifteen percent..not 8.9$ or 10% of the people in our state and this country.... and I bet PR... are out of work or on short hours or have quit looking because there is nothing. Think about them first.. they can't afford more taxes.
Anonymous at 2AM,
>>Why don't you think about when a Park Ridge government employee of any kind...city, schools or parks... ever did went out of the way to do anything exceptional for you or your family or anyone you know...anyone. I have lived here over 40 years and I do not know of a single example.<<
...just because YOU don't know of a single example...and have you given any thought to maybe [that] has something to do with you?...doesn't mean there aren't any. In fact, a city employee went out of his way in the extreme for me, personally, just last week...to help me out to clean up a mess I had made, and to save the city some overtime expense.
I also know of another example where city employees put in personal time without pay or overtime pay to make the landscaping on the water reservoir nice for the neighbors in the area.
We DO have good city workers. YOUR ignorance of that doesn't change a thing.
anon 2:00 am:
First of all. Get some sleep. Second of all, of course we and out elected officials have to watch how our money is spent, and what we are getting for it. This includes all the areas you mention.
But my god, somethimes I think I am living in an alternate universe. I hear all this bitching about all these things and they are completely different than what I have experienced.
Your comment takes the cake. "Why don't you think about when a Park Ridge government employee of any kind...city, schools or parks... ever did went out of the way to do anything exceptional for you or your family or anyone you know...anyone. I have lived here over 40 years and I do not know of a single example".
I cannot believe the bitterness in this statement. Do you never get out of your house??? Of course we need to always evaluate and make inporvements but as an example, my daughter is in School disrict 64. I have had people at all levels (from principle to teachers to aids to office personal to bus drivers) do exceptional things for me. I am grateful beyond belief that I have this learning environment for my daughter to be a part of.
I have also had exceptional experiences with police and public works. They bailed my ass out big time in the floods. Thankfully, I have not had any experience with PRFD but I am sure they are exceptional as well.
I am at a loss as to why your 40 year experience in this town is so dramatically different from mine.
Anon 2:00AM
What do you do for a living? Or what did you do? Are you angry about the incredible difference in pay between the CEO's and the worker/union member? What a pompous blow-hard you sound like. 40years and you haven't deemed any service preformed on your behalf sufficient, I suspect no one lives up to your expectations.
Post a Comment