Originally Posted by
Dexlin
Haven't read many of the posts, here, but my intial reaction from reading the articles, yesterday:
- It seems that Bing uses the threat of an EFM everytime he wants something in particular done, and he usually gets it. It's going to be very hard to tell when he's telling the truth about the city's finances when he cries wolf so much.
- Bing, whether you like him personally or not, has shown and proven on numerous occassions that there is no way he should be appointed EFM. Someone said above that incumbent mayors should be barred from becoming EFMs of their own cities and I completely agree for philosophical reasons.
- Some departments and services do need to be privatized or regionalized with the county, period, and it needs to be done now. Payroll and public lighting get brought up, and I'd definitely agree with unloading their costs.
- I said it in a long thread, but if you're losing nearly 2,000 of your city's resident a month, there is no way you'll EVER be able to cut services fast enough to catch up with that. Never. In many cities, spending really is the issue with the budget. Hell, even growing cities face budget problems. Detroit's central problem isn't its spending but the physical loss of its tax base first and foremost.