Re: City Council rejects cuts to police, fire
Newport Daily News - Newport, RI, USA
By Sean Flynn/Daily News staff. NEWPORT - The City Council made it
clear Wednesday night that eliminating a $618,190 shortfall in the city
budget this year will ...

So how does our NEW city council hope to close the multi-million dollar
budget gap?
-- by saving all police & fire positions in the name of "maintaining
public safety" and trimming overheated overtime budgets?
-- by forcing the city manager to eliminate every new initiative that
might make the delivery of city services more efficient?
-- by just throwing this financial hot potato back into the city
manager's lap until he finds that formula that converts lead to gold?

I challenge any councilor -- especially those who have close relatives
in the police or fire services -- to step into the sunshine and justify
current police & fire manning levels and to compare our manning and our
public safety workloads with that of other localities. (Extra credit
given if you include performance data, too). C'mon, let's see the data.

Why am I concerned with this issue you ask? It's because I sat through
a budget workshop for the 2002-2003 budget and watched in amazement as
the councilors spent 15 minutes arguing with the new city manager over
his request for one new position in human resources (to help the city's
overworked human resources director focus on high priority issues) and
then watched these same councilors spend a mere 90 seconds blessing the
$14 Million budget request coming from the police and fire departments.

Mike Cullen