Mayor Nagin slashed the city budget and the realization of everyone thinking objectively is that cuts will have to be made somewhere. I still haven't heard anyone involved come up with anything new. It looks like we are once again depending on traffic tickets to ease our money problems. I would like to see someone take a chance and throw something new on the table. I don't know all the rules for spending money in this city so here's a question for all the smart people. We have 75 million dollars in the recovery budget to buy up half of Mid City for a new hospital complex that still don't have the money to build.
(My opinion is the money isn't coming because FEMA has decided the old Charity building can be opened with the money that they have already committed. Because of the way the state handled Road Home and our constant quest to make every city official a criminal, I don't see the federal government sending us 500 million dollars for more stories about how we messed over our own citizens. You can't spend all day putting one another down and expect good things. Now, back to my question....)
Would it be legal to take some of that 75 million and put into the regular city budget to make up the shortfall? We should take all of it. Councilwoman Clarkson keeps assuring everybody that the disaster loans that have been the way of balancing the budget will be forgiven as the reason we won't be in crisis for the 2010 budget. When that day comes we can use that revenue to replace the Mid City money if needed. I honestly don't think the federal government is going to give us the money to make this plan happen anyway. We ought to just take what we have now and scale back the plan to fit what we can afford. We shouldn't be holding the money we do have hostage for the state, the federal government and LSU if they can't deliver on their part of the funding.
Would it be possible to move this money or is this another case where guidelines and the city charter give our leaders an excuse to not think outside the box?
1 comment:
Peace Cliff,
I've learned that we can never expect politicians to make the right decisions - particularly when it comes to how to spend money. I'm sorry if this sounds cynical, but I've seen the same sort of ineptitude in just about every city that I've ever lived in.
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