Thursday, October 22, 2009

Mum Is The Word

What you didn't see in the Official Unofficial Minutes of the WL BOA last week was anything related to a pay increase for city workers in 2010. Although Jerry labored through his "preveiw" of the 2010 budget, including the potential addition of a full time police officer, no mention of relenting of his point of view that the city couldn't afford to give pay raises. You might also recall Aldermen Hoy and DeJong led the charge in just saying "no" to merit increases. Change of heart? When the 2010 budget is adopted we'll find out. In the meantime, Mary stays mum on the issue, not sending a BOA notes out in September and not mentioning the issue in her October email.

Another issue that died a silent death was Mary's reference to financial wrongdoing by someone not named during the September BOA. She said it was an issue that should be disclosed in closed session. I contacted Mary by email to ask why the BOA didn't go into closed session, she replied she was waiting for someone else to make the motion to go to closed. Apparently no one did. But wait, I contacted Vic DeJong via email on the same subject, he said he offered (to Mary) to make a motion to go to closed. Interesting. Anybody curious about what is really going on? How about you Mary worshipers...any thoughts?

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

Not really surprised that the city would consider NOT giving pay raises this year. There are many places not giving raises, in fact, I heard of one yesterday that had not given any raises for the past 3years and were laying a lot of people off.

Anonymous said...

Heard tonight on the news that KC, K Police will not get a raise this year.

Anonymous said...

Are they building monuments?

Anonymous said...

Don't know if they are building monuments or not but frankly, that has nothing to do with this matter. You are trying to compare city money to donations. Money raised for the entrance monuments can not be used to pay salaries anyway.

Anonymous said...

Frankly speaking what it says to me is our people who serve us get nothing because we cant afford it right? but our community can afford to pay for donations for entrance monuments.

To me that means the same people against asking WL residents to pay our public servants for a job well done are willing to ask the residents to pay for entrance monuments
To me that means we place more value on things than people

Anonymous said...

Once again, you are confusing budgets. You really need to spend some time up at City Hall understanding our City's financial limits versus donations made to the entrance monuments. They are not in the same bucket. If you want I suppose you could ask the BOA if you could start a campaign designed to give the city's employees a raise??? If you feel so strongly about it, just ask.

Anonymous said...

I am not confusing "buckets and budgets" the point is that regardless from what pocket the money comes from it still has to come from the community.

Why the effort for finding a way to fund monuments and then tell our public servants we just cant afford to give a merit increase as money is tight ?

Explain why we would we asking residents to find a way to afford a donation for monuments when we say we cant afford to give deserved raises to employees

I don’t need to spend any time at City Hall to expect that good judgment prevail

Anonymous said...

Is the $50K from KCMO sitting in a "city bucket" or a "donation" bucket? If city, why is it going to a non-essential monument that wasn't destroyed (city hall entrance) and is being funded by donations?

Anonymous said...

The $50,000 is reflected as a deposit in the EAGC balance sheet.

Anonymous said...

With cutbacks everywhere, I have to say at least our secretary's etc. still have a job. They don't deal with public 40 hours a week. At least we haven't had to "Lay" one of them off. No they may not get a raise, but YES they do have jobs. They can always put their resume out there if they would like more money. I'm sure we can find someone in this economy who will gladly take their job right now.
I'm not saying they don't do a good job and don't deserve a raise, but lots of us aren't getting raises this year or the last couple of years. We are just HAPPY TO HAVE A JOB!!~!

Anonymous said...

Our Resident's bank accounts and the City's bank account are two different entities (thank God). This is why I can easily explain how, at least some of our residents, can afford to give donations to build the entrance monuments yet, at the same time, our City budget does not support giving raises to it's employees.

Anonymous said...

So for clarity 8:54a, KCMO made a "donation" to the monuments fund? Vs. paying the City of Weatherby Lake?

Anonymous said...

HAPPY TO HAVE A JOB!!~!
We got in to the mess we are in by those big shooters and financial geniuses who really did nothing to add value .
They created derivatives ,created financial products that had no value. They manipulated futures to make more money for themselves but really it was just smoke and mirrors . All they did was enrich themselves.

Those same people tell the people who really do something don’t expect a raise and we say you know what ?they should be happy to have a job
I know its hateful to ask people who ran some of these financial institutions in to the ground and needed tax payer money to stay afloat to take a pay cut. Oh indignation that those making the big Jack to take a 50% cut in pay to a paltry 3 million a year

Anonymous said...

Still have not clarified if we are mixing donations and city funds

I guess its hard to explain how that works

It wont matter anyway no need to audit the financials either

mike moratz said...

The General Fund is basically the city's kitty. If you donate money to the city it goes into the general fund, sometimes a sub-fund, like the Fireworks fund (another example was the "spaghetti money for the CC). It is my understanding the money from KCMO went to the "City of Weatherby Lake" and then transferred to the EAGC account, a sub of the general fund. Is it combining public funds with private donations? I think you would say yes.

Anonymous said...

The IBD cartoons never talk about the real redistribution of wealth.

At IBD they know where the bread is buttered

They trash Obama but not a peep about Bush's Paulson who came up with the plan that redistributed Americas Wealth to Wall Street firms with no strings attached.
It was a conflict of interest, since Paulson was a former CEO of Goldman Sachs, a firm that was saved by a taxpayer bailout

So they are able to pay bonuses to people who are failures and dependent on the government money.

Our people "should be happy to have a job"

People have no problem with this in the Conservative Camp .I guess better the big guy gets it than the working man. Go figure
What happened to the heads and hearts of "conservatives"?