The message is: I’ll do whatever I want.
St. Louis County Executive Charlie Dooley is at it again, and this time real jobs and real county assets are on the line.
St. Louis County Executive Charlie A. Dooley on Monday presented a budget to the County Council that calls for eliminating 175 jobs, closing 20 parks and other facilities, and increasing fees for construction permits.
The Council believes that Dooley has proposed these drastic cuts to send a message about their failure to adopt his tax hike plan on property taxes. But the really insulting thing? He didn’t even have to propose the cuts to the council.
[County Council Chairman Steve] Stenger has said the proposed budget cuts reflect hard feelings on the administration's part over the failure of the tax increase proposal.
"I believe the administration recommended the closing of prominent parks such as Lone Elk and George Winter to achieve a dramatic effect and to put pressure on the council," Stenger said. "But the administration could make these closures and job cuts any time. They don't require the approval of the County Council. We don't hire. We don't fire. We don't close parks."
No, Charlie Dooley closes parks. And they won’t just be closing…
[The county's chief operating officer, Garry] Earls pointed to Lone Elk Park, with its free-roaming elk, deer and bison, as well as its bird sanctuary, as a financial drag on the county.
The county would sell the land, he said. As for the animals, "we'd sell them to zoos or something," Earls said.
They seem to have a firm grasp on this.
This all boils down to saving roughly $10 million in tax dollars, something Dooley contends is necessary because property tax revenues are down for the year. Of course, there are some major discrepancies between their numbers.
[Dooley] asserted, "Compared to 2012 budget estimates, property tax revenues are down by 10.3 percent."
Stenger said, "Well, that just shows that their 2012 estimates are off, because the county's own revenue reports showed that, halfway through this year, property tax revenues were actually up $1.2 million, or 8.3 percent, over last year."
Stenger said he suspected Dooley's administration was angling to force the council to support a tax increase, perhaps one dedicated for parks.
Charley Dooley is playing nasty political games, as per usual. Maybe if he turned his attention inward he would find some money to save...
County jobs for friends and former campaign employees, police detectives as personal drivers, a trash pickup scandal / lawsuit, free cars for county employees, using tax dollars to fund election polls, hundreds of thousands of dollars wasted on county trucks that sit unused in a parking lot, and attempted steering of tens of millions in stimulus funds to his campaign manager’s organization… these are the types of things that have contributed to the shortfall in St. Louis County, and Dooly was behind every one.
(It really sounds bad when you see them one after another, doesn’t it?)
And now he wants to close parks and pools and lay a couple hundred employees off to cover his losses… and then runs it by the council in a half-hearted and politically motivated attempt to cover his ass, too.
Such is the state of politics in today’s political climate.
- B.H.
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