Former councilman takes aim at new administration; resident raises concerns over proposed surfing beaches

Says Dems have done nothing to slow spending

To the Editor:

For three months, all we have heard from the new administration is the supposedly horrific state of the city's finances. This administration needs to stop talking, borrowing, spending and hiring supporters and start cutting the budget!

City Council members Scott Mandel, Len Torres, Fran Adelson and City Manager Jack Schnirman have had complete control over spending since Jan. 1. Instead of taking corrective action, they’ve wasted three months refusing to stop spending and hiring.

In 2004, when I was elected to the City Council, the city faced a legitimate $7 million deficit amid a promise not to raise taxes for two years. We didn’t declare a fiscal emergency. We got to work fixing things. We directed every city department to cut more than 20 percent of their spending for the last six months of the budget year. 

We renegotiated labor contracts, changed medical insurance providers and cut waste from every corner of the budget. We even cut the City Council’s salary by $20,000 in the next budget. Our quick actions worked. In the last six months of the fiscal year we reined in spending, eliminated the deficit and began to create the first budget surplus in years. The best part was that we did it without raising taxes.

Every day there’s another press release from City Hall describing how bad things are, yet no decisions that may alleviate the situation are made.

Schnirman has to get honest. Recently he said that in 2008 there was a $14.7 million surplus. But an independent audit and Moody’s Investors Service puts the surplus for that year at just over $8 million. Either Schnirman is making a $6.7 million mistake or he’s lying and simply incompetent. If he uses this incorrect number as a starting point, all of his numbers thereafter are off by over $6.7 million. Thus the validity of the $10 million deficit must be questioned.

Schnirman needs to work to alleviate the problem. To date, there are no new polices, no new procedures and no new accountability regulations, as promised. Schnirman has not sent a single memo or directed any department to cut spending. This is a fact — and a mistake.