beterwas
honestly misbehavingArchive for April, 2009
It’s Time
It’s time to stop the insanity.
Norm Stamper, retired Seattle Police Chief, pens a great column comparing the use of marijuana and alcohol.
“Over the past four years I’ve asked police officers throughout the U.S. (and in Canada) two questions. When’s the last time you had to fight someone under the influence of marijuana? (I’m talking marijuana only, not pot plus a six-pack or a fifth of tequila.) My colleagues pause, they reflect. Their eyes widen as they realize that in their five or fifteen or thirty years on the job they have never had to fight a marijuana user. I then ask: When’s the last time you had to fight a drunk? They look at their watches.”
Read the rest of the story here.
Finish Ahead: Bow to the Absurd
A lot of people on the right are complaining that the media isn’t taking their teabagging parties Tea Party Rallies seriously.
Perhaps it’s because they are professionally-organized events disguised (thinly) as spontaneous groundswells.
Maybe it’s because right-wing histrionics and silly stunts aren’t really news, except to Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity fans.
It also doesn’t help that some of the attendees are their own worst enemies. In Cincinnati, the crowd chased away the media, including reporters from the CBS news affiliate.
Here’s some coverage from Cleveland.
Enjoy more tea party highlights: They’re sure to be enlightening and entertaining.
Also, if Glenn Beck is supposed to be there, odds are pretty good that he’ll do something nutty. Read the rest of this entry »
Finish Ahead: Read the Book
I’ve had some interesting exchanges with posters to the Star Press website. One recurring trend is people that have, at best, a limited understanding of how government works, offering up quotes from various texts to support their unqualified positions.
What I find funny is that those same people haven’t actually read the books they quote from, and as such, don’t realize that those writings don’t actually support their position at all. Read the rest of this entry »
We Don’t Need No Water…
The current crisis over the Muncie Fire Department’s vehicle fleet has been building over many years, and has now come to a head. Despite repeated request for equipment budgeting, the current and past city administrations have chosen to try and force the department to choose between manpower and other needs, in an effort to weaken the firefighter’s union.
Now the consequences of that single-minded approach to dealing with the city’s public safety needs have come to bear, and we are faced with paying a premium for our poor planning. As is often the case, the suggested responses to this crisis are as short-sighted as the thinking that got us into this mess in the first place: Close stations, lay off firefighters, replace professionals with volunteers and other variations on the theme of trading manpower for equipment.
As Einstein famously said, no problem can be solved by the same thinking that created it. There are other options out there for us to explore.
Look at Anderson. They have nearly 10K fewer people, but have 126 personnel in eight stations covering a 40 square mile area (as opposed to our 25 ). Coverage is not all about population.
Their fleet has only one vehicle over ten years old, and it’s a 1995 Sabre – as opposed to Muncie’s fleet, whose newest vehicle is 23 years old. They don’t buy used vehicles anymore, and they pay cash, both of which save the taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars.
How do they do it? For starters, they operate their own EMS. It nets them about $1M per year, all of which goes into a fund specifically for fire equipment and buildings. That means that their near $10M budget doesn’t have to account for vehicles or building maintenance.
Also, they take full advantage of available grants. One of the many grants available is the federal SAFER grant, which I imagine we would easily qualify for.
Bloomington, on the flip side, has around 10K more people than we do, but a slightly smaller coverage area of 19 square miles. They have five stations, 99 personnel on staff and much more up-to-date vehicle fleet (of course, we don’t exactly set a high bar to get over).
Their $8M budget, however is supplemented by IU to the tune of over $1M/year. Granted IU is roughly twice the size of BSU, but BSU only pays $100K/year for their contract with MFD. That’s about 1% of our total FD budget, despite the fact that the university makes up 10% of the coverage area and over 25% of the city’s population.
As an aside, both cities also have public safety-friendly mayors. Anderson’s previous administration, however, was much like ours in that they often grappled with the FD in the interest of union-busting. They got voted out in their last election, though, and some of them are now part of our current administration.
The point is that there are lots of ideas out there that don’t involve drastic cuts to an already small department, potentially jeopardizing public safety, as well as our city’s ISO rating – which Chief Clevenger indicated at Monday’s City Council meeting is a very real threat that would result in higher property insurance premiums for everyone.
Also, we can learn much from our neighbors about how to fund and staff our department in ways that don’t involve raising taxes.
Pursuing those ideas, however, means putting aside the animosity that exists towards MFD, and foregoing the underlying objective of ridding the city of unions.
It’s not a game. Lives, property and livelihoods are at stake here. Let’s all stop playing politics and bashing one another, and come together to solve this problem.
Of Which People?
Jim Arnold writes:
I have been painfully pondering words with which to pontificate on the current legislative session that has failed to lock in property tax caps, failed to endorse the Kernan-Shepard recommendations and has proposed an unprecedented one-year budget that spends $800 million more than anticipated revenues.
Words that illustrate our legislators’ poor performance include appalling, atrocious, dismal, disgusting, dreadful, horrendous, pathetic, lackluster and lackadaisical.
Prose that paints an appropriate picture of the mood of taxpayers contains words like, angry, annoyed, perturbed, disturbed, enraged, irate, incensed, fuming and furious.
Jargon to describe taxpayers’ disposition include swindled, scammed, snookered, bamboozled, fleeced, flimflammed, hoodwinked, hornswoggled and hung out to dry.
Citizens reluctantly deferred protest when HB 1001 raised sales taxes by nearly 17 percent, as we were promised property-tax caps in the bargain. Many were skeptical when the sales-tax increase was immediate, whereas the corresponding tax caps were scheduled to be phased in over three years, but we held our tongues in the hopes that our legislators would honor the promise of HB 1001.
If any of the words listed above describe how you feel about the current legislative session and your middle name isn’t Apathy, please contact your legislators by phone, letter or e-mail and remind them that they work for us. Ask them to pass Senate Joint Resolution 1 to lock in the property tax caps, review the Kernan Shepard recommendations and pass a two-year balanced budget that demonstrates fiscal responsibility.
Or maybe they hear what you’re saying, but have determined that you are wrong.
Why does no one ever want to consider that possibility?
The job of legislators is not to do what the voters tell them to, for better or worse; but rather to study the issues and make the decision that he/she believes best represents his/her constituents’ interests. Read the rest of this entry »
Half of the Equation
Day after day, I hear and read comments from people going on (and on) about “wasteful spending;” and how the real problem with our local government isn’t that they lack adequate revenues to operate effectively, but rather that they spend too much money on things we don’t need.
Don’t mistake me, if there is wasteful spending, it needs to be curtailed. At the same time, to many people, wasteful means “doesn’t benefit me.” The amount that should be spent on public services appears to be equally relative. An oft-repeated phrase in such conversations is that “I have to make cuts and sacrifices at home, why shouldn’t the government have to as well?”
There are, however, some benefits that are necessary for a healthy community, and the cost of those programs are irrespective of taxpayer income. Just like your electricity bill: It remains the same, regardless of how your income changes.
We have to keep our community moving forward. If that means digging a little deeper during tough economic times, then so be it. People want to make comparisons to the need for cutting back, but they don’t want to address the flip side of that equation: That you do what you have to in order to survive.
Another aspect of this rather pervasive attitude is semantics. For example, economic development monies are invested, while money for education is spent. Most of the people that speak out on spending are not savvy enough to evaluate the effectiveness of economic development investments; but they can all seem to agree that when money that is being spent, it’s too much. Read the rest of this entry »
Michelle Obama’s Wardrobe Malfunction
Michelle Obama had a “wardrobe malfunction” today, and in front of England’s Queen Elizabeth to boot.
