Tag: Wilmington City Council
In Which We Find That Legislators Can’t Read Contracts — The Sallies Contract vs. Charles Potter
So this deal is still dead and I think that the expectation is that if it gets revived it will be because the new Mayor will work at reviving it. No idea if it is even possible at this point, but that is where we are. In the meantime, we have Rep. Charles Potter putting out a piece of propaganda that specifically misrepresents the terms of this dead deal — I guess so that he can make himself look like a hero or something for standing up to the big bad Sallies and their desire to make Bayard Stadium into a working home field for everybody. He counts, of course, on the fact that no one will spend any time on that document and just get fired up because he says to. I did look at that contract and here is the response to the propaganda with references to the page numbers where I found this info. The items in BOLD are the ones listed on the “Highlights of the major points of the contract with Sallies” that he has posted to Facebook. My responses and references follow.
In Which We Find That Bud Freel Was Right
So jump to now, where we discover that the WFD is 6 months into its budget and $300,000 over its overtime budget for the year. What does that mean? It means that the rolling company shutdowns are back as a cost cutting measure AND both Goode and Williams are now quite open to eliminating those vacant positions:
The higher-than-average overtime cost was blamed on five vacancies in the department and coverage for personnel out because of injury or extended sick leave. As a result, Goode said one of the city’s fire companies will regularly be shut down on a rotating basis to offset the costs and he could move to eliminate a handful of vacant positions in the agency. […]
Note to Wilmington City Council — Ready, Fire, Aim Is Not A Public Safety Strategy
Last night there was a meeting of the Wilmington City Council Public Safety Committee and of the Committee of the Whole — intended to discuss the budget amendment that would authorize two new Inspector positions and and a Chief Information Officer for the WPD. What you could tell when the conversation started was that this […]
Wilmington’s City Council Looks to Wash Its Hands of the City’s Safety Problem and Just Throw Money At It
Timed for the Friday afternoon news dump, Wilmington’s City Council has scheduled a joint Committee of the Whole and a Public Safety meeting to debate the City budget’s first budget amendment (not a month after the new budget went into effect). This budget amendment will add funds to the WPD budget to create two new Inspector positions and one civilian CIO position. The meeting is this Monday (June 29, 2015) at the City Council chambers starting at 5pm. This amendment has been revised from the original ask, now it provides approval for 3 new positions (rather than 4), does not add to the authorized strength of the Department and now spends just $285,000 of a projected surplus. A projected surplus that no one has any confidence in and AGAIN, I do not understand why we are committing to spending money that we think that we might have, rather than money that we actually do have. I’ll extend that to wonder why they are having this hearing at all right now — given that the GA has blown a hole in their budget and no one know what the world will look like on July 1, it seems clueless to spend any time talking about more spending until you know that your budget is intact.
In Which We Find Neither Accountability or Fiscal Sensibility in the Wilmington City Council — AGAIN
Tonight, the Wilmington City Council will vote on an amendment to the budget to add more management staff to the WPD. They will do that without having any hearings, with little notice to the public and without Bud Freel (the Finance Chair) in attendance. Councilman Freel is one of the few points of fiscal accountability (heck of any accountability) in the City Council and doing this without him available (guess Council President Gregory did not offer Bud first class tickets to come back to vote) and without a good public airing is good government malpractice. But then, we are talking about a group of people who aren’t much interested in good government — or, frankly, in representing their constituents. Here is what is being voted on:
Wilmington’s Leadership and Education
It is pretty normal to go to any Wilmington civic meeting and have at least part of that meeting focused on a discussion of improving educational opportunities for kids in the city. This is a good thing, because it is pretty clear that residents know that education is important for this kids; they know that the city is full of kids who need some additional help here and they know that it will be easier for the city to stabilize if it has great schools available to all of its kids. City Leadership from both the Administration and the City Council enthusiastically join in these discussions, carving out their own place in the Amen Corner here and showing themselves as on the same page with what their constituents want. It is a bad thing because none of these meetings is a school board meeting and I have never witnessed one of these discussions where any government official: 1) explained that the City of Wilmington has no authority over the schools in the city; 2) encouraged people to actually take all of this energy to a school board meeting where something could be done to address those concerns or 3) encouraged people to get out to vote in a school district referendum.
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.
Wilmington City Council’s Meeting On Priority Schools
Last night I attended the City Council Meeting on Priority Schools.
I’ve stared at the above sentence for quite a while, not sure how to proceed. Mainly because I think last night was simply window dressing, a box checked off… the deal is done. These schools, imo, are headed for charter conversion, privatization or closure. The only question is when this will happen. Shortly after the December 31, 2014 Plan deadline? Or after the specified four year, approximately 6 million Plan doesn’t meet the standardized test bar?
The Wilmington City Council Clown Show, Part Whatever
The effort to start getting Wilmington’s long-term budget problem under control had a major setback last night when they failed to override the Mayor’s veto of an ordinance that defunded 8 vacant WFD positions. Sherry Dorsey-Walker, Trippi Congo, Bob Williams, Justin Wright and Sam Prado were cravenly joined at the last minute by Darius Brown, who apparently thought that since this vote might lose, he should get off of the reform train.
Wilmington City Council Steps Up to Try to Control the City’s Costs
The last city budget process highlighted once again the difficulty of using that fast-track process to start implementing some budget discipline within the city’s operations. Indeed, that budget not only raised the property taxes of city residents, but also left the city with a surplus – a surplus that no one understands its purpose. There were multiple problems brought up during the hearings – the number of vacant but budgeted positions, the fact that the city isn’t paying its portion of the water and sewer bill, and the fact that the budget largely ignored the WEFAC finding that the city’s financial difficulty can’t be resolved by taxing its way out of it. On top of that, city residents really pushed back on city council people over the passage of that tax increase. To respond to this, City Council is finally exercising its prerogatives as the body that approves spending, to start pulling spending back. This week they started with the staffing at the Fire Department, and they promise to look at all City Departments with an eye to reduce funding for vacant positions and look for better efficiencies.
Finance Committee Hearing on the Bonds for the MBNA Charters on Monday
We talked about this here, when this item first came onto the City Council calendar. Monday — January 6, 2014 — at 5:00 is the Finance Committee hearing that will explore this proposal in some detail. You can see the agenda for the meeting here — this is the only item on the schedule. The meeting is open to the public, and is going to be held in the 1st Floor Council Workshop room (next to the Council Chambers) in the Redding Bldg. Pass this info along to anyone you think will be interested in what happens here.
Charter Schools To Get City of Wilmington Bond Funding?
Inside we have the proposal that is on the agenda for tomorrow’s City Council meeting — an authorization for the City to help with the financing of the MBNA buildings that are supposed to be converted to Charter Schools. But take a look at this: Charter Schools that the City will have no control of and can’t ask for any accountability from are looking for financial help from the City. Even though City residents certainly are paying school taxes already and provide additional funding via the income taxes we pay to the state. Besides, I thought that these schools are meant to operate more cheaply that public schools — which apparently won’t be asked for here, since they are asking for Bond funds from the City to get started.
Please, Wilmington City Council, Do More Than This!
Last night, one more young person was shot and killed in Wilmington. It is one more tragedy in a city that can’t really take much more of this. But the other thing that the city really can’t take more of is its leadership not facing this issue head on. Last Thursday, the Wilmington City Council passed a resolution asking for the CDC to come to Wilmington to study the causes of violence here.
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