23 posts tagged “michael brown”

ADDENDUM: I have the direct quotes now posted at: http://stupidsavannah.vox.com/library/post/est%C3%BApido-savannah---monday-november-09-2009-13559-pm.html

A whiff of scandal

I am just going off of what I have read. I don’t like to do that because much of what I read is wrong. In this instance I have no choice as the City of Savannah is not following its policy of re-broadcasting and posting the regularly scheduled City Council meetings to the web within days of the original broadcast.

I don’t want to belabor that sudden change in public information policy because I don’t want to get distracted by minutia but I missed the meeting and haven’t been able to see it yet and am not as well armed with the facts as I would like to be going into this. That being said I sally forth.

Go Clifton – Go Clifton It’s Your Birthday! We gon' party like it's your birthday. We gon' sip on Bacardi like it's your birthday.

Clifton Jones called THE MAN out -- right up in the middle of City Council!!! He put it right out on Front Street for everybody to see (unless they were counting on seeing it on the rebroadcast or the web).

“As council members debated the rezoning, Alderman Clifton Jones repeated and expanded on an allegation from one of the residents.

He stated that Ben Farmer, a local real estate agent and member of the Chatham County-Savannah Metropolitan Planning Commission, had an agent who had sold the property to Enmark.”

This is the Boring Background Part: Enmark says it wants to throw up another quality gas station at the corner of Hampstead and White Bluff. They want to take a bite out of the residential property in the neighborhood to do it.

MPC staff and of course the industry-heavy MPC signed off on the plan.

This despite objections from 99.999% of the people in the neighborhood and pleas for patience from the city. It seems the parcels in question are in the Project Derenne study area and if Enmark would just wait they would have a better idea of how the changes in the area might change the landscape and the property they own there.

Thus the request to violate the zoning laws came before council with great big green checkmarks from both MPC Staff and the MPC but with a great big red X from City Manager Michael Brown because the whole thing may become moot if the city takes out the land in question to build a new road for Project Derenne.

Enmark is simply being asked to wait which they seem unwilling to do.

The More Interesting Bits Resume Here: The reason I’ve waited days to report this is because the two emails I got from people in the room suggest that the paper overstated Clifton’s accusations.  My sources say he simply pointed out that Ben Farmer had a sign on the lot in question and that an agent of his company had represented the property and that the property next door is owned by Enmark.

“Farmer, reached after the meeting, said the claim was untrue. He once had a listing on the property, but it expired with no sale.

"We had nothing to do with that transaction. If I had I would have disclosed it."

So he DID represent the land at some point but he wasn’t the one who actually did the deal.

Interesting split of the hair there.  

I would like to ask Mr. Farmer how many parcels of land either owned by or purchased by Enmark has his company represented and profited from?

My Take –

Metropolitan Planning Commissioner Ben Farmer has a conflict of interest.

That is a broad statement of fact. Let’s drill down a bit.

As a real estate mogul Ben Farmer has a vested interest in making sure parcels of land have as many potential uses as possible so as to more easily sell said parcels.  This is in direct conflict with his role on the Metropolitan Planning Commission which is a pseudo regulatory body partially responsible for enforcing zoning limitations on the potential uses of parcels of land.

I have pointed out this conflict in the past. Mr. Farmer is not the only one on the board with such conflicted interests but he is by far the most outspoken and I would argue the most successful in both his business and in voting in favor of variances that allow property owners to violate zoning regulations.

Enmark owns lots and lots of land; Farmer represents lots and lots of land owners. It would be odd if there was no interaction between the two.

Mr. Farmer should never place himself in a position to make any decisions that would profit any of his business associates past or present, directly or indirectly.

As the apostle pointed out to the good people of Thessaloniki so long ago – “Abstain from all appearance of evil.” In other words if it even looks like you might have a conflict of interest you should probably step away.

Ben Farmer needs to step away and somebody needs to buy Clifton Jones a drink for having the brass eggs to point it out.

I like to think of myself as patient. I mean… I waited three whole days and a half before I pointed out this latest example of how piss poor the coverage of our local city government has become.

While I applauded the Savannah Morning News for their “just the facts” approach to last week’s City Council meeting I was unaware at the time that they actually missed the biggest and most important story of the day. Every media outlet in town apparently missed it. I would have missed it too if I hadn’t bothered to watch the budget briefing on the City Channel.

85 City of Savannah Jobs may be Going BUH BYE!

I should have known it couldn’t last. The city did so well balancing the budget for 2009. Like the little engine that could they climbed that mounting deficit till they reached the peak at $5 million and coasted down the other side without any layoffs, furloughs, firings or other shortcuts to Balanced Budget Land.

Unfortunately the picture for 2010 is even less rose tinted than I previously reported.

Here is what the big brains in the Chief Penny Pincher’s office are predicting:

They see $3 million less in revenue coming in next year.

That is a fresh $3 million revenue deficit added to the $5 million revenue deficit we saw this year…. That still too mathy?… um… How bout this?

Revenue is back down to 2004 levels but spending is still up at 2007-2008 levels.  

Think about what you were spending in 2008 – your expenses were probably just above what you could afford on your salary – now imagine your paycheck came in but the Accounting Department made a mistake and paid you your 2004 salary. You still have all the same bills but much less to pay them - that is what is happening to the city.

There was a smidge of good news – City Budgeteers see a small recovery on the horizon with more spending (a 1% increase in Sales Tax and Hotel/Motel Tax revenues), more building (a 5% increase in revenue from inspections fees). Of course those increases are above our already rock bottom levels so not really a cash banquet but still good to see even a slight reversal of fortunes.

Back to the not so happy news – The city has been trying to find a way to squeeze and stretch what they have in order to continue providing the same level of services and keep all their employees and keep from going into ridiculous amounts of debt.

The fact is they can’t do it.

No one could.

Something’s gotta give.

In this case they plan to eliminate some services, we don’t know which ones yet, and some 85 jobs could be erased along with those eliminated services.

Officially: 85 positions will be held vacant, reallocated or eliminated the city's goal is still to avoid layoffs.

Chris Morrill says they think they can do it without firing anyone “What we will try to do is to reassign those employees to areas where, through this economic crisis, we could use some more work there on a temporary basis.”

So those workers who find themselves surplus to requirements will be given the opportunity to do a different job.

City Manager Michael Brown puts it this way “We will give every employee the chance to make a reasonable transition.”  But he stated clearly that there may still be layoffs because some jobs are definitely going away and if the employee isn’t willing to make the transition and do the new job to the best of their ability they will not be kept on.

No matter what you think of the city’s plan I want you to ask yourself if perhaps this story should have been reported by the people actually paid to report on Savannah instead of your faithful unpaid blogger pal ESTÚPIDO.

We all pay for city services, most of us expect them to be there when we need them even if we never need them. How can an important story about an organization that WE ALL OWN not make the paper or television news?

Where is Savannah’s fourth estate?

A couple from the Vox:

"How is it that my house appraisal went down $30,000, yet my Chatham County taxes stayed the same?"

Because the state took away your homestead exemption.

“What this means to all Georgia homeowners who have filed for the homestead exemption is that you can expect at least a $200 hike in your property taxes for 2009.”

SMN could have easily cleared that up but of course the low-paid-under-educated individual that selected and published this Vox call probably didn’t know this. Oh, she could have looked it up but that would be too much like journalism and that is far above her pay grade.

"The board of education has frozen teacher salaries and the state furloughed us for three days, yet they want us to drive to meetings in our own vehicles with no compensation for gas or mileage. They need to look into the legalities of that."

Who is this “they” of which you speak? You should look into the legality of it and if you think you have a case go to court.

Meanwhile you could get in touch with the guys running for governor and point out to them that Governor Perdue had an option on the table last year that would have avoided most of the furloughs, pay cuts and other pain employees have been through.

It seems the State is leaving about a billion dollars on the table each year in uncollected sales taxes. That number comes from the Georgia Municipal Association by way of Savannah City Manager Michael Brown.

The number is based on how much money Alabama “found” when they switched from statewide collection of sales tax revenue to a local-level privatized collection of sales tax money.

The state’s share of that currently uncollected cash would go a long way in cutting the 1.9 billion dollar sales tax deficit.

Why wouldn’t the Governor look for savings like that instead of immediately taking out the shortfall  on the backs of state employees/teachers/mental health workers?

Why would you vote for any candidate that would allow this type of ignorant and poor money management to continue?

We are doomed to have our history rewritten by the willfully ignorant.

Our reading today comes from the most pious editorial wherein Bartoon and company once again lament the loss of our Police Chief, slap Willie Lovett in the face and rewrite the Intergovernmental Agreement that allowed the City Police Department to subsume the County Police Department.

“Indeed, if the interim chief comes from a community that has successfully figured out how to pay for police services, that individual would be a huge plus for Savannah-Chatham County, which still can't figure out how to fund its merged city and county department.”

Yeah, you see they can and did figure out how to fund the police department. They figured it out in 2003 and for the past 3 years the county has been trying to renege on the deal. BTW take a look at who was pushing hardest for the original agreement.

Oh yeah and while we’re into the agreement all this talk of a “police policy committee” hiring the new chief is bollocks. Here is what the agreement says about hiring a chief:

 “The County Manager and the City Manager will jointly consult and confer in the selection or removal process of the Chief of the MPD.”

In 2006, to keep Pete and Russ Abolt from whingeing like a couple of little girls, the Mayor and City Manager Michael Brown stretched the merger agreement’s “police policy committee”, which was originally and quite vaguely designed to offer guidance on” intergovernmental issues and affairs”, to encompass the hiring process.

This move and the policy committee input were completely facesaving symbolic. Russ Abolt had about as much say in hiring Darth Berkow as I did which is to say none at all. Michael Brown hires the Police Chief because the Chief is a City Employee.

But Bartoon and the rest of the Sid and Marty Krofft rejects over to the paper are trying to make the policy committee into a real thing, a real thing they apparently want to control.

“Here's another recommendation. The police policy committee consists of four people: Two members who represent county interests, and two members who represent city interests. Unfortunately, the even number of members sets up the potential for tie votes and stalemates, which poorly serves the community.”

Uh huh, so you think they’re going to vote? What, are they sitting around in their “Police Policy Committee” club house with the hand painted sign reading “NO GIRLZ ALOUD” writing their choices out on little slips of paper? “Darn it boys another tie vote! We’ll never find a new chief!”

Yeah…uh…no.

Does the Savannah Morning News take joy in sowing discord?

They must. Why else would they spend so much time discussing disagreements over an issue instead of the issue itself?

The Savannah City Council’s last meeting was rife with emotion.

Some leaders were angry because of the false perception that money had been cut from one neighborhood in favor of a project in another neighborhood.

Some leaders were angry because of the false perception that drainage projects are being delayed while money is being spent on projects in another area.

The anger over these false perceptions was fomented by less than accurate SMN reporting and, in turn, became the basis for even more less than accurate SMN reporting.

Here are the facts:

There is nowhere near enough money in the City of Savannah capital improvement budget, and won’t be for the foreseeable future, to even begin a single new drainage project.

The City of Savannah is redoing the curb and gutter in the Edgemere/Sackville Neighborhood. This is a project the SMN goaded council about back in March.

Neighbors report the work and added police attention is reducing crime and making them feel safer. This is an effect the SMN praised this month.

In trying to balance the budget, City Staff have postponed some capital improvement projects. These include a new Fire Dept. training facility and improvements at the municipal building on Broughton Street. Neither of those delays will impact ongoing operations or services to citizens.

As part of the savings from delaying some larger capital projects City Manager Michael Brown was able to find enough money to redo one more street in the Edgemere/Sackville Neighborhood. This move was misrepresented this week by the SMN.

The SMN’s report on the meeting, at which all but two council members voted in favor of spending the money for Edgemere/Sackville, was focused on acrimony and anger. Lost in the paper’s ode to ugliness was the basic fact that some left over cash is going to help transform a neighborhood.

Larry Stuber is the council rep from that neighborhood and since the paper saw fit to leave out his rational and balanced statement I include it for you here.

“This is not in my opinion an unusually large change order $860,000. It is a unit priced extension, that’s like if you buy widgets for $10 a piece you have 100 in the original you are now going to have 200, you’re paying the same price for the same work. There’s nothing wrong with that. If it was $2 million there would be nothing wrong with that on the extension of a unit price contract.

This $860,000 change order has gotten mixed up with a very substantial long range drainage project. We’re talking, I’m going to go ahead and be specific, Habersham Village and Baldwin Park those projects are $20 to $50 million.

Now when the City Manager and his staff is managing a $400 million, five year, capital budget, trying to manage that budget and find funds to finish a nine city block area that was on the verge of becoming the Strathmore area.

 In another five years this area would have been destroyed. The neighbors considered it a battlefield, a warzone. Now I know that. I went out there and I heard it. I heard the gunshots I talked to these people. I can tell you if we had not done this project in five years this would have been another Strathmore and we would have been looking to tear it down and look about what we could do with it at a cost of probably $100 million. Now it’s on the rebound as the article said.

So, I would like to say to you, when you’re managing a $400 million budget and we are able to find $860,000 to save a neighborhood that’s money pretty well spent.”

Dudes! You guys are supposed to keep up with what is happening in Savannah.

Why don’t you do that?

“LAST OCTOBER, Savannah City Manager Michael Brown told City Council he was taking a "surgical" approach to chronic flooding problems in the mid-town.

So when does the operation begin? At what point does the lack of action at City Hall become bureaucratic malpractice?”

They are bitching because a recent storm turned that low spot along Habersham and 60-something Streets into a pond for a little while. The paragons of perfection want it FIXED NOW! They want to know why it ain’t been FIXED YET.

This is a pet peeve of mine.

You live in Savannah.

Most of Savannah is below sea level.

Savannah will flood.

It’s a fact.

The fact that every single house in every single neighborhood doesn’t flood every time it rains is a triumph of determination, ingenuity and engineering. BE THANKFUL!

DUDE! The 2009 City of Savannah Capital Improvement Budget does not include any money for the improvements they are talking about. Anybody that claims to follow and report on local government should know this because the budget has been on file since November of last year.

Here’s the only Drainage Improvement listed in the 2009 budget:

The $10,000,000 allocation for drainage improvements will support the Bilbo Outfall improvement project that will serve the South Historic Beach, Beach Institute, Hitch Village/Fred Wessels Homes, Eastside, Dixon Park, east Victorian District, West Victorian District, and East TAD District neighborhoods.”

For those who are not aware, the Bilbo Basin is north and east of downtown.

For those who may have forgotten, the city has less money this year. This is something they predicted and also included in their budget plan that, again, has been on file since November.

“As a budget balancing strategy, the capital plan does not include funding for General Fund projects in 2009.”

So here’s what I want to know:

Are the editors at the Savannah Morning News so ignorant as to be unaware of which projects have been budgeted for and which ones have not?

OR

Are the editors so irresponsible as to attempt to make political points based on false information and unrealistic expectations?

If you wonder what happens when the Savannah Morning News fails to cover significant stories like the tax digest update they missed two weeks ago; take a look at Wednesday's Vox:

"It's strange that Savannah is the only city without falling property values. It must be due to the stellar city and county officials."

I can’t tell if the folk over to the paper are simply unaware that the overall value of existing property in the city tax digest went down or if they are aware but choose to print false information anyway.

Chances are they don’t care or the truth doesn’t fit their agenda.

Come ON! Did you read the article you wrote? Cause if you had you would have realized the whole top half of it is contradicted by the bottom half.

“No matter what you call it, that little strip of grass in front of your home is no longer the city of Savannah's responsibility.

Savannah has cut funding from the city budget to maintain the strip of grass - sometimes called sidewalk lawns and sometimes called tree lawns - that grows between sidewalks and roads in front of many homes.”

Uh… NO NO NO! Folks who have those little landing strips in front of their homes have ALWAYS been responsible for keeping them neat. Visit the Beach Historic neighborhood on the east side of downtown if you want to see how elaborately some homeowners care for those little bits of green.

But wait… apparently the folks at the newspaper know that already.

"It's an ordinance that has been existing in our city log," Bell said. "It requires property owners to take care of their property lines to the center of the road. It's been in the books for decades."

Did you catch that? The tree lawns ARE NOT the city’s responsibility and haven’t been in recent memory, or ever if you talk to some of my neighbors. The city was spending money caring for them simply because some homeowners are too lazy to do it themselves and Michael Brown didn’t want the headaches that would come if tall grass overtook parts of Jones Street.

What this article is saying is not that the city is suddenly not going to pay to cut the grass, it is saying the city is finally going to start enforcing the law.

I lack words to express how stupid a person would have to be to write these two, completely contradictory, statements as fact in one article.

I don’t know who Corey Dickstein is, I don’t know if Corey is a man or a woman so I cannot give my usual honorific and I will avoid my inner middleschooler’s burning desire to make fun of the surname.

I can only find four articles that carry the Dickstein byline, so I must assume that Dickstein is a recent addition to the Savannah Morning News family and the fact that Dickstein’s allowed to…

Okay the pronoun thing is getting on my last synapse! I’ll just call Dickstein "IT" kay?

I don’t know for sure but I imagine the fact that IT is allowed to pollute the public discourse is a direct result of Morris Publishing’s firing of veteran staff and hiring neophytes or repurposing non-journalist employees as reporters.

IT should be laid off or at least kept away from writing implements.

I find myself saying this a lot lately SHUT UP DEAN KICKLIGHTER!

Sunday Ms. Conn focused on Mr. Kickedinthehead’s latest attempt to weasel out of paying for the police department.

He asked Marshall Dillon uh…wait, what’s his name? Festus...? Uh…I mean, Sheriff Al St Lawrence to come up with a plan for policing in Unincorporated Chatham.

“Lawrence estimated the county could provide police services for fiscal year 2009-10 at a cost of $11.8 million, compared to a metro police budget of $14.5 million. That would translate, Lawrence wrote, to a difference per county resident of $33.”

From a reporting standpoint there are a number of questions Ms. Conn failed to ask or, if she asked, failed to publish:

Does Sheriff Al’s analysis include ongoing expenses such as benefits, insurance and the annual contributions that must be made now to fund ongoing retirement and pension payments?

Does it take into account the expense of finding and hiring a new Chief?

How about replacing those officers that want to stay with the City?

When Uni-Chathamites pay their annual $138 policing fee they get the exact same service that City Folk pay $329 for each year.

For less than half the price I pay, they get a cop whenever they call and also reap the benefits of the City’s efforts in recruiting new officers, investing in new technology and training detectives.

We actually should just dump the County and be done with it!

As the Mayor put it:

“…we can say we had a marriage that didn't work and let's divorce."

It is just that easy. We can dump them anytime we want.

For those with Alzheimer’s or just very short memories, back in 2003 our electeds, both City and County, in a spirit of togetherness and because state law favored consolidation, decided to create one Police Department to cover both Savannah and Uni Chatham.

After much bellyaching and backscratching they signed an agreement that essentially killed the 91-year-old Chatham County Police Department and gave all policing power and oversight to the City of Savannah Police Department.

Oh they made a big deal about how they were merging the two departments but it was fairly clear that the Brownshirts of the County Dept. were toast.

Now the County is reduced to the role of a customer for policing services offered by the City. They have no say in the matter because the agreement made the “merged” department a City of Savannah Bureau and the Chief of the “merged” Department a City of Savannah Employee, as are all the officers. As such the Chief and the Department answer only to Michael Brown and Michael Brown only answers to the Savannah City Council.

We should just dump them and see if they can really do it cheaper, otherwise hold their heads underwater until they pay what they agreed to pay in the first place or, better yet, make them pay what I pay for the same service.

It is like the Savannah Morning News is in the business of creating misinformed tards!

Their latest weapon in the war on all things truthful comes by way of the Vox Populi:

"Regarding Chief Berkow interviewing for a position in the Cayman Islands, now is the time to open up the pocketbooks and pay for our quality police chief. Don't let him leave. We need him during these times."

Yeah.

Where to start with this one…

Darth Berkow started in 2005  2006 as the second highest paid employee in the city at $158,000 at the time City Manager Michael Brown made a little more than $166,000.

I can’t find his current salary published anywhere but just giving him 3% raise a year (conservative in a town where most employees get 2.5% automatically with an additional 2.5% merit bump available) Darth’s current salary would be in the $177,000 172,000 to $180,000 175,000 range which again puts him just below or right at what the City Manager is making currently.

The fact is he is making plenty and we’re not going to pay anyone more than we are paying him now.

Look people; Berkow is not going to the Caymans; he is not even the best qualified person that is up for that job.

If Darth did leave what is the big whoop? He’s been here for 3 2 and a half years, he has made all the impactful changes and reorganizations in the department that he is going to do. All he is doing now is political maneuvering to get control of CNT and moving precincts around.

I personally think he is doing a pretty decent job with the day to day but he ain’t perfect and he is far from irreplaceable.

WARNING: Big Long Rambley Sometimes Pointless Rant Ahead

Surprise! The stimulus check is not in the mail.

Today Savannah’s City Council got a chance to vent over the paltry sum of Georgia’s stimulus money or lack thereof that appears headed for our town.

Although I can’t find it reported anywhere, we apparently ain’t getting that big pile of money that we thought we were getting for transportation projects.

I’m a little confused.

Apparently we may get $7 million or maybe not. We may be in line for Phase 2 funding but we may or may not be in line for any Phase 1 funding. Then again maybe we will if the DOT decides to remember that Savannah is a major metropolitan area at their May board meeting.

Truman Parkway, which we all thought was on the DOT list of stimulus projects, is “too big” according to City Manager Michael Brown and won’t be funded. Council is now apparently begging the state for some stimulus crumbs to widen and improve drainage on President Street.

Uh Hellow! Kind of important stuff happening but not being reported!

BTW Brown says the Strathmore Redux is costing between $16 and $18 million of your tax money.

$2.4 million of our money was poured in today. Considering how little money the city claims to have these days that’s pretty darn important and yet we still get this level of quality reporting?

“Current tenants in good standing will be moved to new units as they are developed, and the city hopes the Savannah Gardens project will clear up crime and give the neighborhood something to be proud of.”

If whoever they had reporting this one had bothered to even read the agenda they would know that the development has already lost about half of their “tenants in good standing” during the past year. Kinda puts a crimp in that whole “moving the tenants around” thing.

Then across town we get this:

“You may remember a couple of years ago when the city spent millions of dollars to turn the Old Garden Homes into Ashley Midtown…”

Yeah… uh… no.

Unlike Strathmore, Ashley Midtown is a HUD Hope Six Project paid for by Federal Tax Dollars the City barely approved the project they certainly didn’t pay for it.

Alas, only one source that I could find got it mostly right.

“…less people means less rent money and that combined with the decision to speed up the process all leads to a budget shortfall.”

According to this story, CHSA claims they kicked out more than half of the neighbors because they were trouble makers.

“Darrel Daise is executive director of CHSA Development, the organization that owns the property.  He says there are only 130 families left out of 300.  "If somebody was having problems or causing problems for the other good residents out there, we didn't want them," said Daise.”

So let me get this straight there were 170 troubled souls living there when they started? That would explain a lot. What it does not explain is why people continue to propagate this myth that the Strathmore neighbors are simply playing musical apartments until construction is done. It ain’t true so stop reporting it!

Tony Thomas wants Bartender registration and licenses.

Here is how that would work: If the Bartender serves underage drinkers, the Bartender could lose his license, if the Bartender loses his license the Bartender cannot work.

But Thomas also wants to push stiffer fines, probation or possible jail time for the underage drinkers themselves.

He thinks it will be a deterrent and wants to form a task force to discuss it.

Yeah. Sure. We’ll get right on that.