Last night I attended Mayor Fung’s budget presentation. It was not pretty. Mayor Fung began his presentation by saying he wished he had good news for Cranston, but he didn’t. There is no ‘bailout’ coming our way that is going to save the day. Below are my comments as I heard them during the presentation. On Thursday, there will be a public hearing. I plan on attending and trying to really live blog at the meeting. Stay tuned.

6:51 PM

People are filling in as we await to hear Mayor Fung present his first budget. The crowd certainly doesn’t appear hostile and with Fung’s overwhelming victory, one wonders if the council will be out of step with the public with respect to Fung’s budget. In fact, I just heard someone say, “I really think he’s [Fung] a Democrat.” No, he’s not but again, I don’t think this is hostile territory for Fung at least sitting hear in the seats.

7:04 PM

And hear comes the Mayor. One of the first things Fung is focusing on is under/over budgeting. The previous administration’s budget, under budgeted costs and over budgeted revenues creating a significant shortfall in the upcoming year’s budget to the tune of $7.4 million.

This means layoffs will be coming & the rest will be made up from the rainy day fund. There will be no additional supplemental tax as unadjusted unemployment is at 11.1 percent and foreclosures continue to soar.

Ok, while this is bad news, this is no different than what the private sector is facing.

7:14 PM

The Mayor is proposing a 10 percent reduction in the workforce. However, he mentions the police contract he was able to work out with the union that was tabled (yes, tabled) by the Council. It would save the city about 400k and could potentially offset any lay-offs there. Why the Council tabled this is purely political. They want to get the credit for working a deal with the union and not have Fung get all the glory. But, in my opinion, who cares if we can save the city money and help keep policemen on the street does it matter who got the deal done? As a Cranston taxpayer, my answer is no.

The Mayor also noted that Cranston’s indebtedness will be over $10million for FY 2009-10 and that he will increase funding to the school department by $1million.

[Added later]

The school wants 2.7 million so the 1 million Fung offered is well short of that mark. I’m curious to see what the school committee members think of this.

7:20 PM

The Mayor recommends as 5.46 percent increase to city taxes meaning taxpayers will now pay 19.29 per thousand on their homes. For a house valued at $202k this represents an additional $156.00 of property taxes each year. I’m a Cranston homeowner and tough times call for tough measures. I’m fine with this so long as the extra money isn’t wasted and the Council continues to ignore economic realities. My fear is they won’t see that the Titanic just hit an iceberg and will continue along as if nothing happened.

Well, that’s pretty much it. The public hearing is scheduled for April 2^nd and I’m definitely going to try to make it.