The Virginian-Pilot
©
VIRGINIA BEACH
The City Council has approved a 2010-11 budget that launches several building projects, leaves the mounted police patrol intact, and keeps libraries open on Sundays, all without raising the real estate tax rate.
What the council couldn't restore under the budget plan, though, was its relationship with the School Board.
In the budget approved Tuesday, the City Council will use $8.8 million of the school division's savings to partially fund a new animal shelter and recreation center.
In a last-minute change, the council also decided to roll back some financial freedoms it recently had given the school system. The division will now have to ask the city for funding by category, instead of getting a lump sum and spending the money as it sees fit.
School board members fired back with a resolution Tuesday night saying that they "deeply regret" the City Council's decision to tap the school's reserves and move away from lump- sum funding.
"It really surprised me," School Board member Carolyn Weems said. "I'm hoping it wasn't punitive, but it's curious that came up at this point."
The relationship between the two boards has grown contentious in the past week and a half as they argued about the use of division savings. Superintendent Jim Merrill sent out an automated message last week to all employees and parents of school children about the possible funding loss, a move that angered City Council members.
"We have an awful lot of work to do to restore the confidence that has been lost over the past week," Councilwoman Barbara Henley said.
Council members stressed that the school division is getting the money it requested for the 2010- 11 budget and that the city will try not to dip into education reserves next year. The school division expects to see a bump in its reserves because of some changes in the state's retirement plan that should help in its 2011- 12 budget, Mayor Will Sessoms said.
Still, Tuesday 's hearing drew a crowd of angry teachers and parents.
The budget process has been difficult, but Virginia Beach is lucky, Councilwoman Rosemary Wilson said.
The city is funding several major projects, including a new Kellam High School, Wilson said.
The $1.9 billion spending plan, which goes into effect July 1, relies heavily on savings and an $18.1 million loan repayment from the Southeastern Public Service Authority.
The budget also eliminates 170 positions, almost half of which are vacant, and requires new employees to pay 5 percent of their salary toward their retirement benefits, a cost the city currently covers.
The City Council approved the budget in a 9-0 vote.
Bill DeSteph was registered as an abstention after he said he approved of most of the budget, but didn't actually vote on it.
Rita Sweet Bellito was absent because of a family death.
Deirdre Fernandes, (757) 222-5121, deirdre.fernandes@pilotonline.com
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Democracy in action was clearly not a factor in this budget
hearing. Despite Councils promise to enhance transparency, this process was characterized as a flawed budgetary process. A process that glaringly stifled open public discussion and free debate. Our Mayor arbitrarily slashed the budgetary comments from three short minutes to an unconscionable two minutes. Mr Mayor, If your going to employ a policy to restrict our citizens prepared remarks based on a 3 minute duration, than the reduced time limit should have been publicly announced days before. Citizens who called to sign up on the same day to speak were told they have 3 minutes and the City should have adhered to this guideline. Bottom line, the budget is the single most important item our council representatives are entrusted with, yet our Mayor & some on council supported a policy to inhibit public comments. Those who voted to chop the budget should not be returned to their seat in November. There were 17 speakers and if each one was allocated 3 minutes, their time at the podium would have taken just 51 minutes. If that short duration was not bad enough, you allotted 2 minutes or just 34 minutes for public input. Less than 4 hours were allotted for public comment at all Ci
What a hoot
Al is a real hoot. When Governor McDonnell adopted the tactic of not proposong a budget, instead relying on the committees in the Legislature, to cut some $4,000,000,000 from the state budget, which frankly, is the root cause of all this infighting going on in every city in the Commonwealth, did Al and VBTA raise their voice in protest at how the citizens had been kept out of the state budget process? No, of course not; that was cuts, so the back room will do just fine. Contrast that with the open workshops, multiple public hearings, council work sessions open to the public, formal council public hearings at which citizens had the right to speak. So Al, you doth protest too much. Your ideology is showing as well.
Come on Mike, your guys are stashing $192 milling in
purported reserved tax dollars which are clearly slush funds and your going to blame the legislature on the City's budget shortfall? The massive "subsidies" to special interest are going through the roof and you have the audacity to blame our so called shortfalls on Richmond. Mike, please don't tell me you think it was ok to run a budget hearing like a track event. Please enlighten us why the Mayor & Co chopped the speakers comments off by one minute? He could not handle 17 speakers at less than an hour? See if you can impress the Pilot readers by staying on the topic and share your rationale for that greedy policy.
Never enough
Of course, Al, you realize that the Governor and General Assembly chopped citizens to zero, zilch, nada, in the consideration of $4,000,000,000 in cuts to the budget, and you are complaining that you only got two minutes to speak at the city's public hearing? Each speaker received three minutes at the budget hearing at Tallwood H.S., and of course, we can all submit written comments. So you and moribund leadership of the VBTA, the group that got less than 16% of the vote and who usually criticize excessive school funding, now want to make out that your are champions of education. Give me a break, if it were up to the VBTA, you would sell the schools. The City Council cuts $80.3 million from the budget, yet it is never enough for you.
Opps! Democracy oin action -Should read
Those on council who voted to chop a citizen's time limit from three to two minutes should not be returned to there seats in November. There were 17 speakers and if each one was allocated 3 minutes, their time at the podium would have taken just 51 minutes. If that short duration was not bad enough, the Mayor allotted 2 minutes or just 34 minutes for public input. Less than 4 hours were allotted for public comment at all City budget hearings. It is clear that this Mayor and several of his colleagues do not have the interest of our citizens well being at heart. Mayor, you were not elected to demonstrate your ability to be a time keeper and cut speakers off in the middle of there sentence, This was not a track event! . Only Councilman DeSteph was concerned with a segment of the budget that was designed to increase utilities fees and other fee hikes by over
$10 million. That is why Councilman DeSteph could not support a third of the budget. This unconscionable new tax burden was permitted to slip through the cracks without any concerns or discussion. Voters should be aware that Council members Jones, Uhrin, Woods, Wilson, and Henley supported the new fee & tax increases for
Is this what DeSteph supports?
Yes, apparently, Councilman DeSteph supports the VBTA's wacky ideas that would end up costing us much more. These proposals, which of course were rejected by the voters when John Moss got less than 16% of the vote, included the following: mandatory cuts in the school budget due to decreased enrollment, contracting out for all blue collar work in the city and the schools, eliminating all participation in all regional service providers, thereby requiring mass duplication of infrastructure and operations, no funding for state programs like the Commopnwealth Attorney and the Sheriff, cease funding for all arts and humanities programs, eliminate the Patriotic Festival, eliminate all support of recreation centers and community sports programs, no sand replenishment, and no city involvement in economic development nor visitor development. These proposals would bankrupt the city and cause our taxes to rise, so let's hope the VBTA gets less than 10% next time.
Tea Party Agenda
Hey Tea Party, this is your tangible agenda in your quest to act local and think national: We need to invoke term limits otherwise corruption compounds like interest on a credit card. Once these guys are in, they build momentum because most of us vote for who has the brighest signs or whom were most familiar. Next, Push the agenda of regionalization. We need to combine all these little cities and counties into one city broken down into boroughs our wards like other big areas. Tea Party, your all about lowering taxes while maintaining quality of services in security. In tea party terms, you get to pay less tax while the cops get to buy cooler guns. All these layers are costing our end users, the taxpayers and their kids. If you guys want to win, push and explain in detail these agendas. The only reason why we are not unified is because of the incredibly big egos of city officials and mayors throughout the area. Term limits will be the first big step to force perpetual change. George Washington stepped down, why can't our elected clowns do the same?
Way to reveal your
Way to reveal your ignorance; the newly elected members voted the same way as those who have been on Council longer. Kind of blows your theory.
Its called group think
The problem is that the older bulls put pressure on the new ones to vote for corruption with the concept of the favor bank, back room deals and threats from staff and city folks of not cooperating. George Washington volutarily stepped down after 2 terms because he felt that power corrupts. Not everyone who gets elected is a general, rich guy and idealist. We have a lot of petty people who only know how to get rich by stealing and never know honour because they never joined the military. For these people, we need legislated and mandatory term limits. Both on elected positions and in city government positions. City government is not harder than the military which has an up or out system and no one stays in the same position long. There is always a new crop coming up every year. The government processes have to be robust and repeatable in such a manner that no one person becomes so important that they can blackmail the people. However, the low-IQ types we get in government design these positions for self-preservation and longevity. Tea Party, this is your cause. Limit government by limiting people's time.
Annnnnt! Smaller gov. - not larger, closer to people
I am a member of the local TEA Party - the notion of "We need to combine all these little cities and counties into one city broken down into boroughs our wards like other big areas" is the w-r-o-n-g direction. The closer government is to the citizens, the better. If anything, we need to limit each City Council or BOS to no more than 100,000 citizens so that the city government is smaller and more accountable to a smaller constituency. Smaller budgets will reduce the desire of local businesses to go after hundreds of millions in insider "economic develop" "public-private partnerships". The debt limits will be lower and the whole process of governance will be easier to understand. The larger the government, the greater the attraction for corruption from lobbies seeking to redirent the citizen's money away from serving the citizens - and into the pockets of the firms the lobbyists represent. The smaller the budget - the harder to hide money from accountability and transparentcy.