Flawed Providence City Budget Passes

Within the next year, I have a decision to make.  I will be a college graduate, looking for a job, applying to graduate schools, and figuring out a place to live.  I love Providence and the culture of this old New England harbortown, but the prospects of me living in Providence a year from now continue to dwindle.  

Last night, the city council passed a budget that is seriously flawed.   The budget includes large cuts in education spending, cuts in basic city services such as fire and police protection, and topped it all off with a 4.25% tax increase in addition to the property re-evaluation that occurred this spring.

Those are the same reasons I left my hometown in Southern Ohio several years ago, and the same reasons why I will not be moving back there in a year.

It comes down to poor city management.

Listen to what one of our councilman said,

“I know it’s not easy, but we’re going to have to be leaders in this matter because the State House failed us, and we’re going to have to start making the tough decisions,” Finance chairman, John Igliozzi.

Start being leaders?  Since when do true leaders depend on somebody else to fix their problems? Apparently, this is reflective of our “leaders” in city council.  They depended on the state General Assembly to compensate them for their financial mistakes and poor city planning.

The ”tough decisions” Igliozzi spoke of should have been made years ago.  There is no long term city plan in Providence.  If there were, the city would not have to continuously raise taxes, cut education funding, operate an underfunded city pension fund, and sell city property for one time sources of revenue year after year.

This budget hurts all city residents.  There is no good that can come out of it. Parents will be forced to send kids to private or charter schools to receive adequate education.  The pocketbooks of the city’s residents will be tightened as the burden of higher taxes falls upon them. People in need of emergency help will have to wait longer while ambulances from Cranston and Warwick are called in to come to their aid.

This budget serves as a prime example of the mismanagement problems going on at City Hall. At the end of the day, it hurts the citizens of Providence and deters any rational, middle class person from moving into the city. 

As for me, I have serious quams about making a significant life decision of permanently residing in Providence in my post-college years.  I will be an educated and contributing member of society.  The city should want to retain its young citizens as we are the future.  Unfortunately, the city’s mismanagement presents a major disincentive from the prospect of me claiming full time residency in Providence.

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See also: Providence Residents express outrage at tax hike

Newt discusses government bureaucracy & inefficiency

Consider these words from Newt Gingrich:

Today, it has been almost six years since the attacks of 9/11, and we still haven’t realistically confronted the threat posed by the irreconcilable wing of Islam. In comparison, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, it took us less then four years to defeat Italy, Germany and Japan. In less than four years, we built a two-ocean navy, put 15,500,000 men and women in uniform, produced more than 50,000 aircraft a year (and more than 100,000 armored vehicles in 1944 alone) and built the most expensive project, the B-29, and the second most expensive project, the atomic bomb.

Today, NASA has a plan to take 30 years to get to Mars while spending hundreds of billions of dollars. In comparison, it took precisely 6 years, 10 months and 8 days from President John F. Kennedy’s first commitment to go to the Moon to the first landing

Today, building a fifth runway at the Atlanta Airport took 23 years. In comparison, in 1931, the Empire State Building took 1 year, 3 months and 9 days from groundbreaking to completion.

Newt’s basic premise is that big government has not done much to enhance our way of life.  Rather, it prolongs the ways and means we go about fixing our problems, and sometimes the problems don’t even get fixed.  The slow and inefficient pace with which the government acts is a nuisance to everyone.  

Competition and free enterprise are at the heart of America. If we want to continue to be a world leader, we need to return to those key ideals and not play the political games that have plagued our system in recent years. A government more concerned with political games and payoffs, and with intricate levels of bureaucracy have direct side effects to its people.  Newt has an interesting 10 point plan to address some of these issues which focus on investing in updated technology, forming incentive based systems for our schools, and fostering a system of freedom for entrepreneurs.

::Update:: More McCain staff resigns

Two more members of McCain’s campaign have decided to depart.

His political ad-makers, Russ Schriefer and Stuart Stevens, announced their resignation with complaints of not being paid.  They are not sure when financial limitations would suffice a paycheck and how much it would be.

Everyone else has decided its time to go home, why is McCain still hanging on? With such major staff departures from his campaign, it can only be increasingly difficult to form a strong, unified message that is necessary to win the Presidency.

McCain, pack up your bags and go home.