Truth in Advertising.
By Jim Conley • Apr 11th, 2008 • Email This Post to a Friend •
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Whether or not a proposition 2.5 override ballot bailout passes on May 6th, it’s hard to miss the fact that the current town hall team is not up to handling the people’s business. They have only one arrow in the quiver - raise taxes.
This is not a surprise.
We have no meaningful audit function in Brookline. What we have is a so-called audit committee chaired by Selectman Nancy Daly (I’m not kidding). When DPW employees were selling town property and pocketing the proceeds, Daly and her campaign co-chair Selectman Bobby Allen called the issue, ” a mountain out of a molehill.”
Does that sound like a pair interested in exerting control?
Most of the waste in town government, I contend, is in the $20 million services line item in the 2009 budget–a $3.2 million increase from 2005. Now, it’d be one thing if the increase in payments to outside services were offset by a reduction in payroll, but they’re not.
So I guess that’s what the Proverriders mean when they say that a “yes” vote will maintain Brookline’s high level of services. They’re talking about saving the outside vendors. And if you want to find the motherload of useless contracts, start poking around the school department (especially the superintendent’s office).
I’m not willing to lose even more economic diversity in Brookline to save the consultants. But that’s just me.
Jim Conley is publisher of On Brookline.
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I like the program of one article a day here. That way, the quality is high, it’s an amount I can handle reading all of, and the author doesn’t run himself into the ground, the way some bloggers do. I didn’t know some of those details about the services and DPW issues, despite reading the Tab most every day.
can you give us any idea what is in that $ 20M services budget ?