Half of city council passed the 2014 budget this week. The mayor broke the tie and voted for the budget.
City staff had submitted a 784 million dollar budget proposal for council’s consideration.
After much work and sole searching about where we could cut back, council added 17 million dollars to staff’s request.
Good work council
Did council realize that staff’s proposal made cuts in most of the departments that work with quality of life issues and thus they added money to augment those departments? (Read City budget) The library, zoo, public health and parks were being cut back, to name a few of those departments.
No, each of those departments is still being cut. Departments that deal with internal processes and construction are being increased.
It takes an army
The backup material to the agenda item includes a figure that I need help understanding. The staff proposal allocated 36 million dollars to “Human Resources”. The revised budget allocates 63 million dollars.
That’s a bunch of human resources. Are raises being given? Are more people being hired? Will it take an army of clerks to handle the money they are spending? Was the original staff proposal wrong? They do have a history of understating expenses.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
Just looking back at the Nov 2012 bond election, and I quote from one of the flyers: “Prop 1: Voting ‘yes’….means better places to stay ative; Prop 2: Voting ‘yes’…means better opportunities for learning and entertainment; Prop 3: Voting ‘yes’ means visitors will fund the…baseball stadium.” I think the reasoning must be, “since we passed the bonds, those things are already funded…soooo, now we can cut from those “quality of life” items and give our planners and joycee and company, and engineers the major chunk of the budget. Quality of Life? Bah! Maybe for the “insiders.” What a hypocrisy! The mayor disappoints us again!
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Checked out the budget item for HR. If you drill down it’s the benefits premium for the employees. You know, the domestic partners and such that Cook paid $500,000 to give them. City self funds insurance so it’s steep. Who knows why it had to be revised…
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