Mayor Orders Three Bacon Double Cheeseburgers (and a Diet Coke)

Why do professional politicians and career bureaucrats always threaten
to harm your children when someone questions their schemes to raise
taxes? At a recent City of Eagle budget hearing a "friend" of the
library suggested that those who were troubled with a 27 percent
increase in the Library budget wanted to, "burn a house down to save
money on utility bills." This argument actually supports keeping these
kind of "friends" away from the library, especially when the children
are there. Here is their real logic: If you don't give me the spending
increases I want, I will burn down the library.

Fortunately the council voted not to increase property taxes. The
Statesman reported that this will save the taxpayers $61,000. However,
this is only part of the story. Property taxes were originally
scheduled to increase $431,402. Now they are only going up $370,402.
This is a 10.5 percent increase over last year. When it comes to
taxes, saving means not losing as much as you expected. Good news
honey, I only lost $500 at the racetrack, not the $700 I was expecting.

We were supposed to start this new fiscal year with $1,437,643 in
carry-over savings. It has now surfaced that this money was too much
of a temptation for the Mayor and Councilman Guerber. They spent over
$1 million on the bicycle racing track. This was way way over what was
budgeted. In order to do this, they raided our carry-over savings
account when nobody was looking. While we all love parks, is this
really a priority given our difficult economic conditions?

We need a Transparency Ordinance now. Citizens need to be able to
watch the spending in real-time. We don't need these spending
surprises at the end of the year after our money is all gone. A
Transparency Ordinance will put city spending online so we can see
everyday how much they are consuming. We need to put a video camera in
the kitchen so we can see who is sneaking in for snacks after
midnight. Maybe this will stop the cheating on the budget diet.