Duluth City Hall: Help us balance the budget
“I need help.”
It can be a hard thing to admit. Especially publicly. Yet public servants at Duluth City Hall have done just that with its citizens budget committee.
If you missed the story, give it a read. Duluth city officials are seeking citizen input on ways to further slash the town budget. The city’s $17 million has already been sliced and diced. More is needed. An expected $4 million revenue shortfall is expected for fiscal year 2010.
Talk about civic transparency. Talk about solid leadership. Hard to find fault with this approach.
Tell us what you think about the site
Customer Care »
Vacation stops, manage subscriptions and more
AJC Services
Sections
Other Editions
Visitor Agreement | Privacy Statement
© 2013 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
23 comments Add your comment
Michael H. Smith
April 9th, 2009
9:01 pm
How do you properly screen a citizen from the first amendment?
Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and “to petition the government for a redress of grievances”.
Government better want EVERYBODY’S opinion. Whether we want their opinion or not is fine, because we are not obligated to hear any redress of grievances, period. The day any government at any level sets a policy or makes a law refusing to hear SOME citizen’s opinion/redress, it is going to be a pretty good day in court for SOMEBODY and the ACLU, IMHO.
LT5000
April 9th, 2009
8:59 pm
Is the same Blubbering Badie commending Duluth for trying to balance the budget while in his last column was demanding more state funding for MARTA?
Morehouse Guy, Squirrely Franklin has no interest in balancing Atlanta’s budget. Unless her drug dealing son in law cuts her in on the action. Does anyone remember Shirley pulling strings to get him out of jail?
Yeah, that was another column Blubbering Badie didn’t write.
LT5000
Bubba
April 9th, 2009
8:32 pm
(a). You don’t need a law degree or an accounting degree to be an informed advisor, Morehouse. Are you suggesting that being a citizen only entitles me to vote on who gets to spend my money, and not in how my money is spent? (b) I don’t mind setting a time window, but I want that window to be more than a token “here’s your chance to be heard. You got 48 hours.” (c) How do you properly screen citizens? How do you properly screen elected officials?! ‘Cause I gotta tell ya, dude, I know of some “common, peasant citizens” who would be eminently more qualified to render an informed opinion than some of the numb nuts who currently hold an elected – dare I say privileged? – position.
Sounds like elitist arrogance to me.
Morehouse Guy
April 9th, 2009
5:43 pm
The City of Atlanta should seriously consider this model (not necessarily the Duluth approach, but the model). I’m sure the mayoral candidates will include this as a part of their agendas (as will the City Council Presidential candidates). Citizen confidence in City Hall is at a nadir and anything that opens up the historically opaque city budgeting process is probably a plus.
Here are my questions: (a). budgeting is an arcane, technical process — can citizens actually be informed advisors? (b). I’d be particularly concerned about how time-consuming this could be — is there a time window for citizen participation? (c). Because I’d want to avoid the most unreasonable recommendations (see the first posting, lol.) how do you properly screen citizens? Let’s be honest folks, do we want EVERYBODY’S opinion? I’d think not. The model is good; it’s a welcomed departure, but it’ll need a little more tweaking to ensure that it’s manageable and useful for policymakers.
Michael H. Smith
April 9th, 2009
5:10 pm
WoW! That’s quite a piece of cake. I’m glad I don’t dine in DooLuth.
jim d
April 9th, 2009
3:02 pm
$21 million? a peice of cake–write a couple more tickets.
Cathy
April 9th, 2009
2:22 pm
Jais, obviously you don’t pay for anything. You blog 24/7. When do your UE benefits expire? At least the illegals work.
Bubba
April 9th, 2009
1:45 pm
Too, it would have been smarter to rezone the roads through downtown before they started building stuff. Would’ve been nice to find a way to get people in and out of there before creating high rent buildings for business owners who can’t physically draw customers. The roads are like a moat around the castle: no one gets in, no one gets out.
Bubba
April 9th, 2009
1:40 pm
Good luck getting rid of DPD. They bring in too much $$$ for the city coffers.
Mark, The Original
April 9th, 2009
1:28 pm
To avoid confusion with the Mexican Mark, and the White Supremist The Original Mark, I will start using the name “Mark, The Original”. This way I won’t be mistaken for those other retards. When replying to me, please refer to me as Mark, The Original. Thank you.