Great job.
ROB O’NEIL
Woodland Hills
It’s a lipstick jungle all right
We now have it on pit bulls, though traditionally it’s been ascribed to pigs when officials try to dress up an unfavorable report or outcome.
So Monday night the city manager tried to put some lipstick on the city’s budget to deflect attention from the General Fund shortfall.
Unlike previous years where few residents took interest in the city budget, this coming election year may have some candidates actually challenging the budget figures painted over by our City Council to look balanced.
They know that a pig in lacy trim is still a pig.
This year, another multimillion-dollar shortfall in the General Fund, the main operational fund of the city, cannot be covered up by Glendale Water & Power transfers.
Other pressures have come to bear.
Budget problems in Sacramento, the city manager told us Tuesday night.
Some may allude to the surprising downturn in the economy or the collapse of the housing bubble as the real culprits.
The real reason, as it has been for most of the past 10 years, has been an unmitigated increase in personnel costs.
A triple whammy of increases in the last eight years: more employees hired, huge salary increases and major increases in benefits.
The city manager told us that city government is living within our means and that the city has a strong and healthy reserve.
And to support the well-rehearsed presentation, he handed out a multi-page budget document that could be deciphered only by accountants.
In 2006, Jim Starbird’s own staff in finance gave us a caveat during the two-year budget planning presentations.
They claimed that the projections on revenues did not include possible downturns in the economy (expected recessions every 10 years).
