My interview on the Bob Rose Show is available right here in mp3 format. Right click on it and save to download, or left click and wait for your media player to open it. It’s about 10 and a half minutes long. Of course, it you will join my Facebook fan page, you will see they have it on an inline streaming player where you just click a button and listen. Find that fan page link in the right sidebar.
Former Gainesville City Commissioner Ed Braddy recently had this article published at New Geography. All local voters should read this to get the other side of the mass transit fantasy that many of our local officials have.
Essentially, policymakers need to see transit as a service with an important but limited role to play in most urban regions. With jobs and more activities spreading to the suburbs and exurbs – a process often accelerated by economically disruptive urban policies, cities should focus transit on a limited number of central core commuters as well as those people who cannot drive. Unfortunately, such goals are too modest for planners who envision transit as the catalyst for large scale social engineering and who have little concern for their regions’ economic bottom line.
Recently, county commissioner Mike Byerly shocked residents when they read this in the Gainesville Sun:
Byerly said that he believed too many road-widening projects intended to ease congestion remained in the county’s plans, and the only thing that could make the planned bus rapid transit system work was if traffic gridlock on area roads drove people out of their cars and onto buses.
Voters must be aware that our own local elected officials are trying to reduce our choices and funnel us into their hopes and dreams with OUR tax dollars. Read it here.
At some of my events and interviews I have said that it is important for the city to cultivate a working relationship with the churches because they are the city’s natural allies in confronting homelessness and other societal ills. I recently said that, as Mayor, I would go to the churches to tell them that they are welcome and that their participation is needed to make Gainesville a better place. Although I have not yet been challenged on this, I will anticipate and answer two potential questions in this space.
Do not confuse my call to action with a desire to Christianize the local government. I am just trying to desegregate it. Anyone should be able to take his faith, whether you are Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Wiccan or Atheist, with him into the service of his community. It’s also a good opportunity for us all to interact and learn from one another instead of isolating and writing each other off.
(Reprinted from Alachua Voter Guide)
While perusing this year’s Gainesville City Budget’s summary document, I found an interesting fact. It is fairly plain language that even a window cleaner can understand. Therefore, I pass it along to you, the other citizens who are on the hook for the high cost of government. It’s a paragraph found near the top of page 10, and here is the important excerpt:
“Pension obligations are met primarily through three sources of funds. Employee contributions to the fund are set at a fixed percentage of pay. Investment returns on pension assets comprise a substantial portion of pension funding, and the balance of funding required comes from contributions from the employer. Therefore, poor investment return years require higher contributions from the employer to meet required funding levels.”
In case you are missing something here, we, the taxpayers, are the employers. The other important thing to notice is that you, the employer, are obligated to meet funding obligations when investments have a bad year. So, all of you who took a hit in 2008, losing about 40% of your retirement investments, have to bite the bullet to keep the city pension fund from failing to make money.
Keeping in mind that this is, after all, a defined benefits plan, we will not get into the details of whether such an expensively insured plan is mitigated with below average return on investment anyway. But it does indicate that the city should hire employees and create new departments only when the gravest need arises. There are not many companies that can survive not only an economic downturn, but having to insulate its employees from this effect with money it no longer has.
City employees who like this arrangement (and who wouldn’t?) should want to insure this arrangement’s long term viability by helping its employer to NOT incur deficits. But deficits are what we have, and that could be the case for years to come if we do not get some hard-times discipline.
Stay tuned to this blog as I visit other budgetary challenges that could be met with your money and your lack of opportunity.
