No, I'm not kidding:
The city's budget woes appear to be getting worse as world events such as the devastation in Japan and unrest overseas begin to hit home.
While testifying before the City Council Monday, Budget Director Mark Page says the uncertainty of international events coupled with a likely $600 million funding shortfall in Albany makes the city's financial outlook seem even more grim.
"We're in a period of notable uncertainty in terms of, we've not seen exactly these things before, certainly not in the events comparable to the Japanese events and oil problems are not totally new to us, but it's very difficult to know where that's going to come out," Page said.
City Council officials are using the annual hearings to discuss several hot button issues, including proposed teacher layoffs, senior center closures and the plan to shutter some fire companies.
Comptroller John Liu, and City Council Speaker Quinn (who can read the negative Bloomberg polls as well as the next person) both targeted Bloomberg's beloved outside contractors for savings:
City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and City Comptroller John Liu are targeting outside contractors as a way to save the city money.
"Spending on outside contracts is an area that we simply must scrutinize more closely," Quinn said.
"It is possible to save hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars in the coming months and years," Liu said.
Several Council members have suggested averting some of the cuts by extending the so-called Millionaires' Tax, which would require Albany approval.
Governor Andrew Cuomo has said he is opposed to the move.
Ah, yes - the answer to this so-called "budget crisis" is pretty simple.
Extend the millionaire's tax.
Cut the billions Bloomberg is spending on outside contractors.
Cut the DOE's $500 million dollar technology budget.
And cancel the contract former NYCDOE chancellor Joel Klein signed with Wireless Generation before he quit the DOE, went to go work for News Corp. and convinced Rupert Murdoch to buy Wireless Generation.
Oh, and there is one more audit for John Liu to do - the Wireless Generation/Klein/Murdoch nexus.
There couldn't be a connection between Cuomo receiving over $75,000 in campaign contributions from the Koch's and his opposition to the millionaire's tax now, could there?
ReplyDeleteLiu also needs to look at the SESIS rollout. That was the new IEP computer program with nary a word of documentation on or off line. It was "rolled out" (dumped on teachers and related service providers) in the middle of the year with zero transition time or gradual rollout. One day, it was the old program, IEP Pro, and the next day, literally, was this SESIS program sans documentation. I'd like to know the evolution of this program. When implemented, SESIS still a very poorly written program which is not user friendly in the least. Why in the middle of the year? Why not at the beginning of the year when, perhaps, special education teachers could get possibly 2 days, not 2 hours, of training. Their idea of training is to train an AP and then they do all the documentation and training, which is not necessarily the job of an AP. They call this crap "turnkey" training. What claptrap!!!
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