LWV digs into the Westchester County budget
Reporter Jorge FitzGibbon attended a public meeting hosted by the League of Women Voters today on the county’s proposed 2009 budget. Here’s his report from the event, which was held at the White Plains Public Library:
Aside from the typical — and understandable — taxpayer concerns, a few details and tidbits surfaced as Westchester Budget Director Anne Reasoner and two of her deputies fielded questions from the audience:
• The proposal to abolish 52 currently vacant positions from the county payroll next year, which is promised to save $4.5 million, isn’t as rosy as it seems: The net cut is 20 jobs because the county will fill 32 other posts between this year and next. That includes 14 inspectors for the Board of Elections, which is mandated to install new optic-scan machines.
• The county thought it had a deal when it locked in on a diesel fuel contract for the Bee-Line bus system earlier this year at a price of $3.88 per gallon. Unfortunately — and unexpectedly — fuel prices took a tumble since. But it’s too late, with the price locked in.
• County Executive Andy Spano is serious about cutting his office’s fuel and travel costs by 13 percent, Reasoner said, by eliminating “discretionary” meal spending. “I’m not going to tell you that’s 100 percent, because I can’t say that,” Reasoner said. “But the bulk of what’s left in this budget is for contractually driven costs, which I can’t cut.”
• Finally, First Deputy Budget Director John Delaney said the Department of Social Services, the county’s biggest, was also one of the hardest to cut in the budget. “It’s the department we have the most money to make cuts,” Delaney said, “but at the same time that’s the department that everyone’s going to be turning to as the economy gets bad.”
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with regard to the fuel prices…the county executive
and his staff are without a clue….they have no idea
of what the economic climate is….they hedged on the
upside but forgot to consider what happens if the
economy tanks….thats because you have relatively uneducated political operatives making financial
decisions which they are ill equipped to make
If one were to read between the lines of all the BS, what they are all saying is that to pacify us, the ignorant public, they are looking into doing something, but unfortunately, for the record, before they begin looking, they’d like to inform us that nothing can be done. And what in hell is “discretionary meal spending?” Why do we buy food for these birdbrains? If it’s noon and they’re hungry, let them find a diner and dig into their fat wallets to pay the bill and tip. (Oh, yes, they charge the tip to us, too.) And another thing – if the price of oil is now under $50, any company that wants to reap windfall profits from the people of Westchester and not re-adjust prices for reality, should be told to go scratch when they want to do more business with the county. And whoever from the county who gambled with the price of diesel fuel or who signed off on this nonsense should be fired forthwith.
Good choices, too, in buying an in-effect 15 million dollar warehouse from Andy’s buddy, allocating another 15 or so million to repair a bathhouse at Playland and whatever other millions for parkway barricades where heavy saw-horses could do the job. All in the face of a growing monetary meltdown that was being reported daily by the media. Gotta love, too, how these nitwits who can’t fix potholes see fit to try to outsmart the international energy market.
Right on to the consultant. So-called journalist Liz Anderson wrote, “Unfortunately — and unexpectedly — fuel prices took a tumble since.”
Who didn’t expect fuel prices to drop? Mr. Spano? Sue Tolchin? Larry? Most economists, as the consultant observed, could have told the County Executive that buying fuel in bulk at a locked-in “summer” price would make little financial sense given the volatility of fuel prices. At the very least, Mr. Spano should have consulted with top economic minds to see if this made sense. He wasn’t locking in the price for his home heating oil delivery – he was locking in the price for how many tens of thousands of gallons? And with OUR money. It’s this reckless attitude that has plagued the Spano administration. Time for this clown to go.