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Revised City Budget, FY 2006-2007 I made a copy of the revised 2006-2007 budget for the city on June 30 from the city’s Web site. This revised budget for 2006-2007 is a nightmare of false assumptions and financial gimmickry. I counted seven or eight times the city has counted on the use of non-collected funds as a basis for some assumptions. The city has $1.5 million in park development fees (non-collected) from Steadfast (currently in lawsuit), a balance of which will be taken from the General Fund. The city has $775,000 of accruals from the Mission Viejo Foundation (non-collected), which are deferred over five years, further diluting the seed money the city of Mission Viejo put in or will put in. The city has $35,000 for design fees for a bathroom in Melinda Park, which a resident stood at the podium and explained could be put in as a prefabricated unit for a total of $35,000. The council now wants to spend $35,000 just to figure out how to build it. The council has a Department of Information Technology built into the budget with a $153,000 director and four future employees. These services should be contracted out to remain consistent with Mission Viejo as a contract city instead of adding to the bureaucracy. This waste of taxpayer funds the council calls a budget revision should be dead on arrival – DOA. I have a question for the city staff. When City Manager Dennis put his name on the bottom of the Agenda Report as the submitter, did it embarrass him? The improvements in infrastructure and pension funding are a small consolation in an otherwise poorly planned and disastrous budget revision. The budget emphasis should be coming from the top down, which is the council, instead of the bottom up, which is the staff. James Edward Woodin |
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