Beach expects $84M shortfall in '10-'11

I notice a few comments about the SCRAM System. My company, Tidewater Alcohol Monitoring Systems, Inc., is the local service provider of this system covering the area froimn Williamsburg to Virginia Beach and west to Emporia. We have just begun to cover the Virginia Beach and Chesapeake areas.

In seven short months the following has been achieved:

1. More than 60 bracelets have been placed on non-violent inmates' ankles and these people are out of jail, working at jobs, providing for their families and not on welfare.

2. Approximately 15% of these folks have later consumed alcohol and have had their bond revoked and returned to jail. This compares very favorably with the nationwide recidivist rate of 67%.

3. All courts in Virginia Beach and Chesapeake use the SCRAM system in granting of bond and as part of post-conviction sentencing.

4. The system is being recommended in most cases by the Commonwealth Attorney.

5. At an average daily jail cost of $80 per inmate per day, the combined savings of the Virginia Beach and Chesapeake jails is in excess of $300,000 in seven short months. Even greater savings can be expected in 2010 and subsequent years when the s

Let's see; property values rose at an astronomical rate for 10 years, raining down dollars for the city. Then when we have the deepest recession since the depression, plunging home prices, the Virginia Beach assessor drops my property value 2 percent, which I lose an appeal to change. Now they're short money. Every year we paraded to the city council meeting and begged, pleaded and warned of out of control spending, and now they are surprised about a shortfall. Let's face it, these people are bought and sold by the folks that line their pockets. They'll try to bleed us till there's nothing left. In the past they pushed out residents who couldn't afford to live here, now they are stuck just as we are with a frozen housing market and rising unemployment. So we get taxed till we're broke then give some more. Face it, this is fraud, corruption and graft. It's no better than a third world country with incompetence and greed running the place.

Maybe we can start with the $97k we're paying for a VB School System "Diversity Czar." Need any more help identifying ridiculous waste, council members? Cause there's no shortage of examples in how our tax dollars are flushed down the toilet.

Cut all spending until we see black in the ledgers again.

Lets use the budget to determine the salaries of council and Jim Spore. When we are in the black, they get a raise. When we're in the red they lose a ratio'ed portion of their salary back.
We could do this for the state and nation, too. Lets put it to a vote?

I will be the first to vote for smaller government but I get tired of the uninformed arguments for volunteer fire and ems. First, the volunteer ems is NEVER fully staffed and many times your "local" volunteer will be coming from MANY miles away. That makes the PAID firefighters first on the scene to provide u their more frequently practiced medical skills than the volunteer ems who aren't required to and likely don't have the comparable proficiency. Further, in a life and death situation, I want the practiced, highly trained individual responding to my call. I would NEVER see a volunteer doctor so why would I trust a life and death situation to someone who does it as a hobby? So yes-- it is true that volunteers technically cost less but they also have less training, fewer requirements/expectations of their performance, and less accountability. So send the paid employees to my house ANY day and give me ur address so that I can hopefully find some volunteers to show up (and maybe even help) at yours.

and yet DOC (Dept. of Corrections) is always the first on the chopping block. DOC is in charge of public safety....not when the budget gets cut once again. People will then wonder why crime rates go up. Here is an idea why don't the powers that be learn to live with a realistic budget instead of treating taxpayers as their local ATM? We have to live on a budget. Why shouldn't they?

where is jim spore/vb city council's online spokesman???? Will he appear tonight to spin us a fairy tale before bedtime??

Yea Wil "it is a lot of money", brilliant just brilliant. Cant wait to see how you try to spin this one. Keep joining arms with brother Fraim and spending other peoples money (OPM). This is what passes for leadership in VB. Maybe light rail will be your salvation, like Randy Wright.
Light rail equals Heavy taxes. Billion dollar project that has almost no effect on congestion. Average speed is 16 mph. Eighty percent of the cost of a ride is subsidized by the taxpayer. Powered by burning coal, which is one of the leading causes of smog, acid rain, global warming and air toxins.
Maybe a jobs plan is a better idea at this point in time. Just a thought.

If only it was so simple as people assume, but as long as we depend on big government to do the jobs that volunteer citizen forces once did we must pay the bill. The leaders are able to be held accountable through voting and put out of work by private sector leaders; but hey we can only get bothered enough to gripe not act. Put up or shut up and pay! We are paying for the government we want, because limited small government means more citizens need to actually be a part of the community.

It was only a matter of time that this Ponzi scheme of raising the debt limits by unrealistic real estate valuation and allowing a Development Authority to issue hundreds of millions in bonds without citizen approval would place the city in this position. The short fall is less than the debt service.

Now the campaign promises that were made, must be broken.

A reduction in force, like Chesapeake is in order. Attrition is a cop out. The administration is top heavy and walking papers need to be issued starting from the top down. These are drastic times, and it not going to get better in the near to distant future by your attempt to compound the problems by creating new fees and raising taxes. Pay cuts and/or shorter hours, furloughs, and no overtime is in order.

The well is dry out here in the private sector. Government make the hard choices and city council take control. City management put you in this position, their feeble attempt won't solve your problems. Do your jobs or face the consequences of malfeasance. You broke the law by violating the city charter by circumventing referendum for excessive bonding.

....needs to be rescinded. Get the city council out there at the intersections to collect donations.

The city could raise about $718 million a week if every driver that failed to use their turn signal was fined $20.

Instead of another fee to the citizens as Mr. Bailey implies, why not have the Fire Dept start using Volunteer F/F's like the EMS Dept does with Volunteers. We used to have a large volunteer f/f force in VB. Other cities around the Country use Volunteer F/F extensivly. Take a look at the overtime budget for the VBFD, I'm sure it is pretty large because of call backs. Thank goodness the EMS Dept has a dedicated Volunteer workforce, complimented by a very small (percentage wise) career staff.

The EMS budget is 7.5 mill, the Fire Dept budget is $45 million. Assuming the FD call volume is around 33,000 call a year, that is roughly a cost $1400 per call. For EMS the cost per call is approx $200 for the 38,000 calls a year they answer. Seems to me a great deal to have our Volunteer EMS providers out there. The FD needs more volunteers!

Has anyone paid any attention to the the big construction project going on at the Public Utilities office on Dam Neck Road? That's where the increase went. This city wastes so much. The city leaders and managers need to take a good, hard look at where money is going.

the cost of "governing" the city per citizen has almost doubled (90%+) in ten years. Compare the city population vs gross budget of the years 1999/2009. No lobbyist fairytale cocamamie story can make that go away. We're being robbed by political process.

$40 million for train tracks; $43 million shortfall for schools.

We sure know how to pick 'em.