A Requiem for the Wilmington City Council
The Wilmington City Council passed the budget for the next fiscal year — 7-6. Other than the 600K that Bud Freel made sure got added to deal with cameras and to be sure that the WPD could run an Academy if needed, this City Council passed a budget utterly free of any opportunity for asking for better accountability from the Williams Administration and utterly free from dealing with the big issues the city has: improved safety, accountability for programs and departments and a better reckoning of a projected surplus — $2M surplus even though this fiscal year will end with a $500K deficit.
If you live in Wilmington, here are the Councilpeople who could not be bothered to represent you this evening:
Darius Brown
Sherry Dorsey
Sam Prado
Hanifa Shabazz
Bob Williams (who told WDEL that the “administration gets a pass this time”)
Justin Wright
Theo Gregory
Look at that list. This is mostly a group of people who think they are running for a higher office in 2016 and somehow think that they can do that without paying attention to the people they need to represent. City Council President Gregory is particularly galling here, telling people during the vote tonite that he thought that some of the NO vote discussion was indicative of a gross lack of faith in the administration and saying that the budget process was not the right place to have these discussions of change. Which ought to outright disqualify Gregory for any other office — because the City Council does not have much power except at the budget process. They had a really big hand here and they refused to play it. It is malpractice, really — demonstrating a complete lack of political courage to make sure that the citizens have at least one functional part of government.
So nothing changes. The City Council can’t rouse themselves to govern on your behalf. And when they complain about the Administration (and they will) ask them why they voted for this budget. Heartbreaking. Hanifa Shabazz wants to be Council President, so this vote tells you what kind of leadership she’ll bring to the office. ZERO. NONE. She’ll be rubber stamping whatever comes before her too. Darius Brown wants to be Treasurer and he did not advocate for better cost control, better management or even demand to understand how the surplus projection was made. Bob Williams just votes for everything that Willams puts out as does Dorsey. Wright seems to want to run for Council President too, so you can look at this as a preview of what his work will look like. Sam Prado has simply checked out and hasn’t been concerned about representing his District in almost 2 years. Most of them spend more time tending to their Facebook pages than they did in the important governing work needed here.
The Good Guys (voting NO):
Bud Freel
Loretta Walsh
Maria Cabrera
Nnamdi Chucwocha
Mike Brown
Trippi Congo
Wilmingtonians deserve so much better than this. So much better than this.
Tags: Budget, Featured, Wilmington City Council
How did a shitheel like Charles M. “Bud” Freel (to use TNJ’s term) wind up on the list of “good” guys. He’s not a GOOD guy.
No accountability and no real effort to control costs. The Mayor’s office can cut some positions and funnel several hundred thousand (when you add in benefits costs) to Parks & Rec to maintain our city parks.
Does Wilmington need a Public Safety Liaison (we have a police and fire chief)? Does Wilmington really need a Hispanic Liaison? or a Director of Neighborhood Development? 3 positions in the Mayor’s office that can go away and no one would notice.
At last years vote President Gregory said the time for “heavy lifting” was between budget hearings/votes, that was the rationale for approving the budget last year. This year Council faced the same issue, a bad budget, and now his rationale is we can’t fix this administration with a no vote on this budget, the answer is the vote in Sept 2016. That is not leadership, and we have one more budget cycle to go under this “leadership”.
Something has to change in the way this game is played.
Bud Freel watches the city’s budget as if it were his own checkbook. He does the work to understand what the numbers represent and isn’t available to the bamboozlement. He may have other issues, but he’s on point as far as the budget goes. He’s the reason why the $600K was added back to the budget for cameras and an Academy.
Gregory doesn’t know what his job is, really. I remember his statement about dealing with issues throughout the year, and yet that didn’t happen. A big effort to get rid of vacant positions fizzled out and this Council has voted to transfer funds from reserves to cover shortfalls. Shortfalls that could have been avoided if some of them could read a spreadsheet. He’s not going to ask for better accountability on the budget or spending and nor will any of those voting YES on this Mess.
Particularly galling was Bob Williams’ self-congratulatory post on FB about his vote last night. I called him out on it too.
I want to preserve WDEL’s report on the budget vote, including the comments of Theo Gregory and Hanifa Shabazz:
It isn’t micro-managing to demand some cost accountability or to demand a commitment to the recommendations of the WPSSC. That’s City Council’s government job, and they’ve had a very tough time of standing for anything for awhile. Once the budget is passed, they have little leverage left. And Theo Gregory blew it. This man wants to be Mayor next, folks.
This is Hanifa Shabazz and avoiding the heavy lifting is her particular signature. I’d love to know how a commitment to the WPSSC report or some better accountability for money would slow down the progress being made in the city. Ms. Shabazz wants to be City Council President — and you can see this vote and her rationale for it as the level of effort that she’ll put into that promotion.
Am also told that Justin Wright’s wife (in the Finance Department) gets a raise via this budget.
With only a couple exceptions, this whole council needs to go. We need to start recruiting candidates now!
^^^This. Absolutely. And I think we need to give them all an Excel test first.
LMAO @ Excel test!
They could never take the test. They wouldn’t want to micromanage turning on their computers.
Demorat slogan for 2016 – “No accountability and no real effort to control costs”