Friday, February 29, 2008

Revenue Task Force

I came out to bury the Revenue Task Force, not to praise it.

Well, not bury it. I was just a bit underwhelmed by the principal conclusions of the task force that have been in the papers.

* Override/debt exclusion
* Sell city property
* Convince employees to join the state-sponsored health care program
* Dip into the state's rainy day fund.

Each suggestion is reasonable, but I didn't think we needed a three-month study to come up with them. So I was left underwhelmed although I appreciated the work that went into coming up with those rather obvious solutions.

But even though I never wrote that post I take it all back. Why? I actually read the actual report. Fascinating stuff. Very thorough. Very interesting.

I'll say right now newspaper reports don't do the actual report justice. There's much to think about, talk about and act on in those 55 pages.

This should be read.

I'm going to do my best to offer some insights on the report in upcoming posts.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Tom,
Thanks for making a reading mandatory. Its packed with real info and doesn't pull punches about the causes of our $$ woes and expresses which changes that are necessary.

3 surprises for me among the comparisons w comparable cities and towns:

*Only 2 cities don't do split rate [yet?]
*Our salaries and benefits are very competitive already.
* We must really love our library

Anonymous said...

People should read this.

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