Wednesday, June 8, 2011

The Fabulous FAB

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The Finance Advisory Board meets tonight 6pm, City Hall. On the agenda are the following:

1. Discussion of revenue ideas as presented by a politically motivated meeting at Compass and from a paper that was passed around at a city commission meeting. One suggestion was to get rid of the Office of Management & Budget. Ed Fry will love that one. Item Requested by Jessica Plotkin, member of FAB.
2. Discussion of the Capital Improvement Plan 2012-2017. Requested by Ed Fry, head of OMB.
3. Discussion of the revisions to the 2012 Budget Projection. Requested by Jessica Plotkin.

First of all, some of the revenue ideas were legit and I am rather sure that the Finance Department has thought of all of them other than the "far out" and nutty ones in order to keep the PBSO. The C.I.P. is nothing more than a wish-list. It is meaningless and a long range plan that constantly is changed. The FAB has no affect on the C.I.P. I don't know what they want to discuss about budget projections. Forecasts continually are modified and revisions made as information or situations warrant.

Meetings of the FAB should be productive not talk fests for board members. The Finance Department is on top of everything. This board is advisory and a total waste of time. It has no power. It has no affect. It can't even get desired information in order to come to an intelligent conclusion. The public can't get any back-up online. It is there to keep members of the Board busy. Originally its objective was to rubber stamp city hall. Now the energy has shifted to question every little detail coming out of Finance or decisions made by this Commission. And certain people in this community want it to exist as it becomes more political as certain FAB members insist on discussing and hashing over personal agendas.

The Fabulous FAB started off with good intentions. Unfortunately that's all the meat it had.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Lynn, this is not a surprise, especially when you see the names of the committee members on this board, too much ego. Dr. Wayne Dyer says EGO stands for Edging Out God. Sometimes I think our entire city and its leaders have done this. We could use a little more spirituality here and people who care about all residents and not their own agendas, we need more democracy, inclusiveness, and less corruption. We all need to unite and work together and stop all these power grabs and trying to control all. We need to be fair and do things the right way, God's way, what will happen will happen.

Tom Ramiccio said...

Lynn I enjoy your blog, please be fair, lets meet , talk discuss the future of our city. We cannot afford to train a mayor during the budget cycle. We must have bold leadership and a clear path to financial recovery. Please look cafefully at the four candidates and try to put behind you the bad thoughts about politics. We both have to live here, i plan on winning this electio. I don't like loosing. I've won and lost, i like winning. Maybe i can put my tag back on..., no, no just kidding, How about coffee????
Tom

Anonymous said...

Commissions make policy. They should not presume to know more than Staff especially when we have a director like Steve Carr.

Anonymous said...

"Originally its objective was to rubber stamp city hall." Don't you understand the problem with that statement? We have too many board in this city that are filled with "Yes" people had selected by certain commissioners to further their political agendas. The concept behind the boards should be to utilize the expertise of residents to provide the City Commission with valuable input, not to simply "rubber stamp" everything.

Lynn Anderson said...

Sorry. I didn't realize that I had to spell out what I meant here. That statement is true in my opinion and shows that this board, from inception, has been a waste of time. It was formed for the purpose of agreement with the CM. No one wants a rubber stamped Board. It went from one extreme to what it is now. Both ineffectual.