City Hall Elevator Rumblings #44
Rider #1: Remind me next year to be sure to wear dancing shoes to the two-day city budget retreat. Between the city manager, budget director and others, it would be difficult to determine who would actually win on the “Dancing With the Stars” TV program.
Rider #2: How true. Having to listen to two days of the manager’s 7-Stigma blather with little emphasis on the actual budget numbers was mind numbing. I really miss the old days when departments had their entire budget on one sheet of paper and you could compare actuals with proposals. Killing 30 trees for pulp to print a 600+ page tome verges on being obscene. Isn’t the city supposed to be going “green?”
Rider #1: What is truly amazing is that in the current 600+ page document, I didn’t find any real explanation or rationale for the millions of bucks that went through the manager’s financial sieve for McDougalville, the Entertainment Center or other costly projects* that really don’t pay their way. And when some members of the council attempted to shed a little light on questionable items, the music started and the dancing began.
Rider #2: Right. I don’t guess the manager can identify a specific 7-Stigma goal to cover all the dancing missteps that have happened on his watch. And with pending legal action against the city that includes him, one has to wonder how long it will take before city hall can function in a fashion that spares tax payers millions more due to poor oversight.
Rider #1: Hold that thought. The music just started. And the manager with his new dancing partner, Brenda McDonald, is taking the stage. He should score high with his rendition of Elvis Presley’s “Jailhouse Rock.”
* Some of these questionable budget items will appear in a later CCR report.
A note from counsel: These “candid” elevator conversations have been injected with fabricated nouns, verbs, adjectives, conjunctions, adverbs, modifiers and maybe a few dangling participles….Mark Holbrook
