IS MAYOR FITZGERALD A REPUBLICAN?

After being at the "Making Cents" session and then being at the Law Enforcement Initiative forum, the impression could be made that Ed FitzGerald is turning into a Fiscal Conservative and a Law and Order Republican, fortunately for the Democrats that may be a bit of a stretch.

Let's face facts, Council and the Mayor have had to act to rein in spending as well as get a handle on the crime situation before it truly affects the housing market and the citizens.

Judging by this chart, its amazing we don't lose track of money coming in more often.


Also, of interest in a quick side conversation with Jennifer Pae, the City Finance Director after the meeting. I asked her if moving from RITA (Regional Income Taxing Authority) to the City's own tax department has brought in more money into the coffers. She responded that it did bring in more dollars about 3% more for FY2006. To early to tell for FY 2007.


Speaking of the Law Enforcement Initiative, it looks like there will be some public/private partnership between the City and the Taverns in the West End, at the meeting it was announced that 9 tavern owners will share in the cost of added patrols in the neighborhoods around the bars in the west end.
Hopefully, this will begin to allay the fears and anger that the residents in the area have been having the last few years.

Attorney General Issue

I said this back in October 2006 right before the General Election:

Marc Dann did a horrible job of trying to paint himself as the best person to be the Chief Law Enforcement Officer of this state, he kept tripping over his own problems, I still think Subodh Chandra was the better choice for the Democrats.

Looks like Marc Dann may be at the least a one term AG, if he makes it that far.

The blog site, Political Science 216 has been all over this as well as the Columbus and Dayton newspapers.

BUDGET NUMBERS

These are taken from the PDF's provided by Jennifer Pae the City Finance Director:

Click to enlarge each page:














Just to note, this $36MM budget is about $1MM more than the budget in 2005, so as you can see the operating expenses continued to rise at a pretty good clip over the three years since.

Like I said before this won't be the last cut the city will have to face.

COUNCIL AND MAYOR WORKING TOGETHER

Last night the budget was passed, it appears that the time for action has finally come to the City in dealing with the budget.

Now the hard part comes, cuts are to be made, people will lose their job. It will not be easy nor do I believe that this is the end of the cuts, barring any catastrophic event this year, there will be more cuts next year as a way to to continue to stave of a deficit spending.

Could this have been avoided certainly, but that was several years ago. Most on the Council and even the Mayor could not have foreseen the extent of the damage that is the City budget.

Can the residents of Lakewood be ready for the changes, there will be whining and crying about this service or that department is not doing its job properly. Reality is Lakewood can no longer afford to be as unique as everyone wants to be, its just gotten to expensive to handle.

Here is Council President Mike Dever's Letter:


click to enlarge

click to enlarge

Actual Budget numbers will come up in a follow up post

COOLER HEADS HAVE PREVAILED

As I have talked about in a couple of posts here and here, the Board of Elections have step back from the precipice and vowed not to prosecute those Republicans and Democrats who switched parties on March 4th.

Although it appears that one Board Member still wants to investigate the voter who wrote "Today only" on his/her form.

Democratic board member Sandy McNair, who initiated the investigation, asked the board at Monday's meeting to subpoena a Westlake Republican who wrote "Today Only" on his pledge card when he took a Democratic ballot. The three other board members, two Republicans and a Democrat, said they didn't want to force public testimony from the voter.

I think the other board member sums up everything with this comment:

"We have so many other things we need to focus on," said Inajo Davis Chappell, the board's other Democrat. "I don't want to second-guess voters."

Now if we can only settle the dispute between the Democratic Presidential Candidates on the delegate issue, then we can begin to fight for the November election.