I thought it was Presta’s job to go through the workbook and sound the alarm on all of the scams. Well, he was dead on regarding the Vail/Central land swap, but he failed to do his duty on the Tax Budget proposal.

According to this week’s workbook, the 2011 Tax Budget to be proposed at the 5/18/2010 council meeting includes “Capital improvement expenditures are from the five-year capital improvements plan.” Why not break down these expenditures completely and explain exactly what each and every one is and who authorized it and who profits by it? Also, who will the checks be made payable to, and which funds will the money come from?

General Fund revenues projected for 2011 are projected to be approximately $1.2 million more than the 2010 budgeted revenues.

1. At this point in time, there are no changes in the level of City services for the year 2011.
2. The 2011 Tax Budget indicates that General Fund expenditures will exceed General Fund revenues by approximately $900,000.

So, why are no further cuts being proposed? If monies transferred into and out of the General Fund were properly accounted for, and if all items of the General Fund were actually broken down into their best understandable levels, there would be no problem cutting $900,000 out of the General Fund. Those of you who disagree must have no idea of the number of and amounts of transfers into and out of the General Fund each year.

Besides, as usual, there is a total of over $70 million in expenditures for 2011 conveniently lumped under “other” in the various funds. Anyone care to take a guess what evil may lurk within that number? How about it, Corolus? When will you come clean? The “I was just following orders” defense din’t save Adolf Eichmann and it won’t save you.

There is over $10.7 million for “personal services” outside of the General Fund. Add this to the more than $24.5 million in proposed expenditures for “personal expenditures” from inside the general fund, and you get a total of over $32 million dollars to be spent in 2011 on personnel alone.

Also, absolutely none of the over $3 million projected to be spent from the “Public Safety Levy Fund” is to be spent on “personal services”, so where is that going again this year?  Yet they still want us to renew or even increase this tax.  It was nothing more than a fix for deficits caused by stupid spending on pet projects in the first place.  Nothing was ever done to increase public safety, as they promised.