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Budget battles
My head is spinning from reading the Middletown mayor's budget now for an hour. I'm trying to help reporter Hannah Vahl decipher the highlights of the budget and by calculating the proposed salary increases for all the top positions.
However, I constantly get stuck on little things like the city wanting to spend $20,000 on police psychologicals. What are they, and why do they cost so much? Especially when there was only $9,500 budgeted for them last year.
And why does the city expect to spend $30,000 less on gas this year in the finance category when fuel oil is going up by $20,000 and natural gas by $15,000?
And who spends $3,900 a year on envelopes? That's gotta be a place where the city can save money in today's electronic age.
So many questions. Hopefully we will be able to ask the mayor some of them soon.
And here's a question for you. If you got to sit down with the Middletown mayor, what would you ask?
However, I constantly get stuck on little things like the city wanting to spend $20,000 on police psychologicals. What are they, and why do they cost so much? Especially when there was only $9,500 budgeted for them last year.
And why does the city expect to spend $30,000 less on gas this year in the finance category when fuel oil is going up by $20,000 and natural gas by $15,000?
And who spends $3,900 a year on envelopes? That's gotta be a place where the city can save money in today's electronic age.
So many questions. Hopefully we will be able to ask the mayor some of them soon.
And here's a question for you. If you got to sit down with the Middletown mayor, what would you ask?
posted by The Middletown Press at
4:41 PM
4 Comments:
I don't live in Middletown, but was a Town Councilman in Wolcott. Maybe I can help with some of these.
First, police psychological tests - Ask the mayor if they anticipate hiring more police officers this year. New hires first take a written test, then a physical agility test. After that, most departments do an oral interview with one or a panel of officers. Finally a prospective hiree must pass a psychological exam by a licensed psychologist. This is to make sure that new hire is mentally sane and competent to handle the mental stresses of being a police officer.
The fuel expenditures catch me off guard sometimes too. Gas - is likely vehicle fuel. Most cities sign contracts for each of these. Don't forget that this is an estimated budget and the real economy governing how much these costs actually are may warrent the city transfering funds between accounts. Ask how these accounts ran this past fiscal year to see if money was transfered to or from the accounts that might not be visible on the spreadsheet given.
Thanks for your input!
This certainly deserves to be looked into some more...
Vik & Hannah
Here is a novel idea. Try calling city hall and schedule a meeting with the mayor. I'm sure he'd rather answer your questions so the truth is printed the first time VS. assumptions made by the MP
Dear Anonymous,
Your post merely seizes the opportunity to criticize the MP over nothing. It's a blog, not a news story. It's light and a little fluffy which is just what it's supposed to be. However, you've seen a chink in the armor of light hearted writing which candidly tells us, the readers, what a real journalist thinks sometimes when they have to decipher something which intrigues them.
Have a nice though,
Larry Johnson
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