86 posts tagged “savannah city council”

Savannah’s self-appointed GAY spokesperson Kevin Clark is at it again – This time he’s right – for the most part.

Clark is beeatching about how a group of gay “leafletters” were treated at the recent innovation awards. The police acted “stupidly”, to borrow a phrase from the president, when they rudely and unconstitutionally sent The GAYS away from the public streets and sidewalks where the awards were handed out.

However he makes a key mistake in is tirade that the paper should have cleared up or excised from this SAVANNAH MORNING NEWS piece.

Moreover, why did prominent politicians, including Alderman Tony Thomas and County Commission Chairman Pete Liakakis, who were in attendance, stand by and watch as their police committed this embarrassment?

Mr. Thomas and Mr. LIakakis could not, by law, say boo to the cops in this or any other situation.

The SAVANNAH MORNING NEWS knows this, they have lauded this particular part of the Manager Form of Government and they have berated the City Council for Micro Managing when they dared to ask a difficult question of the police chief because they simply wanted to know how many cops we have and where they were assigned.

The paper should NEVER have printed this unfounded accusation.

They know full well that repeating Clark’s criticism makes two electeds look as though they don’t care when the truth is they were as powerless as The GAYS.

In the city’s case Aldermen are strictly forbidden to interfere with the day to day operations of any city department. On a bigger scale anyone – ANYONE – interfering with a police officer duties in just about any situation could be charged with obstruction.

Don’t like the idea that the police can break the law and trample your rights and no one can stop them on the spot?

Tough!

This is the price you pay to live in the false belief that you and your family are safe.

One from the VOX:

"The news told of a young lady being gang raped as a crowd of chicken livered onlookers watched. How revolting and cowardly. That would not have happened back in my day."

When exactly was your “day” - 1964 perhaps? That is the year Kitty Genovese was stabbed and suffocated on her own blood within site and earshot of more than a dozen people who did little or nothing to help her.

Or perhaps your “day” was the 1920’s or 1930’s or perhaps 1940’s or 1950’s when groups of people banded together to hang individuals from trees until their necks broke or they choked to death. No one lifted a hand to stop them and instead cheered them on back in those days.

We are a violent group of animals. We have always been a violent group of animals and we have always run away from our fellow animal’s problems when we have the opportunity.

That is why we survived so long and so well among faster and deadlier groups of animals.

Don’t play dumb!  The exact same levels of violence and cowardice exist in each and every one of us yesterday, today and tomorrow.

For the first time in a long time I was at a complete loss for words but oddly proud of myself at the same time.

So what did you do on Halloween?

I decided to stay in and get caught up on what happened at the quarterly town hall meeting they had over to the civic center the other night. Scary dull I know.

You might be asking yourself “what town hall meeting?” I certainly was since I saw nothing on it from my usual news sources. I managed to find a blurb that it was coming up but no coverage of the actual meeting.

Turns out I didn’t miss much, however the Savannah Morning News could have used this as an excuse to report the current and future economic state of the city -- since they missed that story at the last City Council and still have yet to report it. Head Penny Pincher Chris Morrill provided a brief budget explanation for the apparently very small crowd of neighbors who showed up.

Despite the fact that Morrill called it “The Great Recession” , which is hyperbolic, his talk was to the point and chock full of as yet unreported, important information about how all that money we give to the local government is being spent and who might get laid off and what services might get cut and such.

Besides that we got the regular “Here’s What We’ve Done For You Lately” somewhat self-serving priorities bit from the bureaucracy and a talk about the as yet completely ineffective Youth Futures Authority and something about Black Male Achievement which I skipped over because I have already achieved what I plan to achieve. You too can skip right over that and the other stuff that doesn’t grab you with handy dandy index points provided at the link posted above.

The other thing that I did NOT skip over was the bit from the Housing Authority of Savannah. They are the Public Housing Folk basically the local arm of the Housing and Urban Development department of the Federal Government.

It looked like it would be a right interesting historic perspective on what the HAS has done since its founding back in the 1930s. And it was, interesting I mean, right up until they got to the bit about Stubbs Tower.

Ms. Earline Davis the executive Director of the HAS described a slide she indicated was an Ad for Stubbs Tower at the time of its construction.

“This is Stubbs Towers the first high rise senior building built by the housing authority. For those of you who remember Stubbs Towers, I want to read

for you what is on the literature ‘Move up to Stubbs -Stubbs Towers offers cutting edge high rise living with breath taking views an exciting floor plan with the slickest contemporary design and the clever use of modern materials and space made for today’s living.’…”

I almost swallowed my tongue.

I created that ad for this blog in 2007. It is not a 1960's era ad for a High Rise Senior Living Facility-it is a fake, a fraud, a poor attempt at funny photoshopping.

I don’t know how to react to this, I mean, do I need to put disclaimers on what are obviously photo fakery? Should I be proud the work was so convincing?

I feel I have to point it out but, given the anonymous nature of my work, I can’t very well call up Ms. Davis and tell her.

So I will leave it to you my dear readers to inform her, as gently as you can, that she should remove that slide from future presentations and should check her sources more carefully in the future.

I am a little ashamed that I was at the root of one of those internet artifacts that becomes historical fact simply because no one knows any better.

I also am a little proud that my work could be mistaken for the real thing…is that wrong?

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?

Why are you wasting so much ink on this?

There are maybe 200 cabs in Savannah. Why does such a minor industry warrant soooooo much press coverage?

Today we get Three, count them three, full on pieces on the taxi industry. They are from students so I guess the SMN, as a cost cutting measure, has figured out how to get even younger and cheaper labor through the door.

    1.       Toma: Cab owners seek City Council-abled cartel

    2.       Toma: College does taxi study

    3.       Toma: Some cabbies want to stiff riders

Here is the deal - the city is trying to decide if they should limit the number of taxi licenses or not.

They are leaning toward doing it and regulating the industry in a method similar to but not exactly like the medallion system found in New York and Atlanta.

Who Cares?

The only time anyone who might care interfaces with a cab is when they come out of the airport or perhaps the Amtrak station but those people’s standards are already low so don’t mind them.

The other people who use cabs regularly are the responsible drunks trying to get home from downtown or the poor and elderly who do not drive.

The former don’t notice or won’t remember, the latter usually use the same person every time and are accustomed to the current situation.

Nobody cares except the cab drivers and they are a microminority and don’t deserve all this attention from the media or academia or the city bureaucracy.

On a different topic: It seems Mr. Atkins filled in for Ms. Conn at yesterday’s city council meeting. He filed a report on the Bar Card issue which was by far the most important and far reaching issue on the agenda yesterday.

The article is a quite thorough recounting of the facts and I suggest you read it if you are interesting in council’s attempts to regulate the bar industry.

 

Seriously - Oh Pious and Pompous One – you need to get out the ivory tower every once in a while.

I am getting a sneaking suspicion the Savannah Morning News editorial staff has some real issues. I think they see themselves as the Cassandra of Chatham Parkway and manipulate the facts in order to maintain their delusion.

The fact that this piece of dime store psychology is coming to me at 6 am does not make it any less valid.

Take, for example, this piece from Thursday:

“ …city staff will present today a proposed ordinance amendment to require licensing of wait staff and managers at establishments that sell alcohol.

City council members should support the change.”

Well DUH!

City Council members are the ones who asked for the change in the first place you ninny!

Really?

Do yah think Michael Brown was sitting in his office one day and said “You know, I just don’t have enough to do running this big ol’ city let’s find one more thing so we can do even more public hearings and really get folks riled up!” ?

There was much more “shoulding” in the piece but I had to put it down because it was just really stupid and obvious posturing for later “I told you so” moments.

Just to refresh your memory this was back in March during the Wild Wing Shaming and Slap on the Wrist Meeting:

“Alderman Van Johnson, whose district includes the City Market area, said he wants to be aggressive in pursuing city registration cards for servers and bartenders.”

“Alderman Tony Thomas plans to read his concerns into the record at Thursday's council meeting and determine whether there is consensus among others on the council.

Thomas envisions a system in which a bartender would be fined for a first offense and placed on probation for a year. If a second offense occurs within the probation period, the bartender would lose his or her city registration for five years, Thomas said.”

Of course they are going to support it they came up with it you ninny!

Addendum - Thursday, October 08, 2009 4:01:27

Okay what is with my use of the word "ninny"? Discounting its use as a name in Fried Green Tomatoes I don't think anyone has actually used that in conversation since the Hoover administration and here I managed to use it twice in less than five minutes.

BTW - I used it wrong here - apparently the original word derived from "an innocent" to mean a naive fool. The editors at the paper are not naive they know exactly what they are doing when they manipulate the facts in print.

GOOD NEWS from Savannah’s City Council

Please join me in a round of applause or at least a moment of silence and thank the cadre of City of Savannah penny-pinchers who have just managed to find $4.5 million in savings to bring our 2009 budget into balance.

That’s right, despite Millions less in Sales and Property Taxes and other revenues, we will end the year without a deficit and with hardly any change in day to day operations.

Maybe you don’t think that is such a big deal. Maybe you find that kind of money in the sofa cushions of a Saturday night but in my experience that level of fiscal restraint and, frankly, fiscal calisthenics in a government NEVER happens.

Think of it this way:

If the Federal Government was run like the City of Savannah each of us would not currently owe $38,498.22 to cover deficit spending.

If the State of Georgia was running to the same standards used by the City of Savannah - School Teachers, College Professors and Mental Healthcare workers would not be taking almost two weeks of unpaid furloughs this year.

Okay enough praise cause we ain’t out the woods yet.

Going forward we still need to reduce spending an additional $15 million for 2010. That’s right just days after we found $4.5 million we have to start looking for more savings to cover what will be a definite further reduction in revenue next year.

Don’t get me wrong, there is a little wiggle room, but the city is already leaner than a vegan anorexic teen so we can’t wiggle much.

 Here is the good news on the 2010 Budget front – they think they’ve already found most of the cuts without too much damage to day to day operations. They aren’t saying what services may get the axe but they were very clear in their discussion with City Council that something’s gotta go.

Head Penny Pincher Chris Morrill warned council Thursday, “I don’t want you to think we’re going to bring you something that will be magically done there are tough decisions ahead.”

That sounded a lot more ominous in person than it looks on the page. Morrill says the bottom line is, after more than a year of squeezing and readjusting their service delivery model to save money and run more efficiently, they need to find $1-2 million more in savings to balance 2010.

 I won’t speculate on where they’ll go to get it but I will say to ignore everything you hear about possible service cuts or any other budget badness to come cause it is all speculation until the budget comes out and after that is still just a proposal until the electeds have their say.

I started out to simply defend the act of elected officials traveling on behalf of the city but, when you look at the history, the fact that Mayor Johnson and others are NOT claiming Caribbean vacations as official travel and making us pay for it is a refreshing change in Savannah politics.

From the Vox:

"They investigated the governor of South Carolina's travel. It is time they investigate the mayor of Savannah's travel."

"Someone needs to remind our globe-hopping city officials that we don't have enough money to cut the grass."

First you should know the Mayor and Aldermen Stuber and Sprague are in Sweden with a rep from SEDA/Creative Coast . This is the latest in a series of exchanges which started with video conferencing followed by about 30 folks from Savannah going over for a trade conference in Stockholm and then about 200 people coming into Savannah for a Swedish trade conference here.  

Basically that one 3 day conference that the Swedish brought here, with the average visitor spending $271 per day, generated almost enough in local sales taxes to cover the entire cost of our leader’s trip. It is hoped that ongoing relations will continue to bring money into the city.

Really though we should simply be grateful that our current Mayor, unlike the last one, is only traveling at our expense on official travels?

“Mayor Floyd Adams Jr. has put thousands of dollars in personal expenses on the city's corporate credit card since 1996, including purchases at the Dress Barn, plane tickets to fly a woman he was dating here from Chicago and a trip to Jamaica.”

How bout the Zimbabwe trip for which Adams had to reimburse the city?

“Feb. 16, 1999: The mayor, the city manager and assistant city manager travel to Zimbabwe as part of a federal program. Adams improperly claims city per diem expenses for his part of the trip, which was paid entirely by the sponsoring agency. After a political opponent obtains documents under the Freedom of Information Act and complains publicly, Adams reimburses the city $935.”

Does anyone even remember how much crap John Rousakis got in that 91 campaign over his going to Tokyo with the Olympics Delegation? His opponents derided him for it even though he helped bring part of the competition and the money it generated to town.

For that matter does anyone remember Al Weiner (Mayor Susan’s husband)? I had the pleasure of calling him an ass to his face once or was that calling him a face to his ass?  I forget.

“He pokes fun at city aldermen, saying one has scrambled eggs for brains and four others have IQs to match. He calls Savannah an economic backwater and hints that he and his wife are headed for Washington.”

And probably his most famous quote: "There are at least four aldermen who, if you added up their IQs, would not equal mine."

I digress but really, when you look at the level of leadership we’ve suffered through in just the past few decades, our current slate of electeds look like the heavenly host.

Addendum Thursday, September 10, 2009 7:24:36

I may have cracked the new Savannahnow website.

Despite this response to my Twittered Questions about my desire for a simple list of ALL stories posted to ALL sections on the site in one place:

"@SavannahNow Currently, we do not have the page you are asking about. The daily headlines e-mail is what we have to offer."

I found this archive page today. As of right now when you click on the date it seems you get a full rundown of ALL the stories in ALL sections for that day in one place.

I still need to figure out when it is updated and since it still has the little BETA at the front of the address it might simply go away one day but for now you should be able to use it to get the news with just a modicum of hassle.

 

Okay… so I’m trying to reconcile what I already know with this headline:

Savannah city budget cuts go deeper

Knowing what I know I was very curious just how much deeper they could go but there is nothing new in the article for those of us who have been paying attention to the city’s efforts to cut costs.

Then I realized that this is Savannah Morning News first mention of the city’s efforts in more than a month so they are playing catch up.

I guess I should be relieved that the tens of thousands of people who don’t read this blog will now know that the penny pinchers with the city have managed to squeeze out more than $10 million in savings without firing anybody or cutting services.

Let’s see you do that with your personal budget.

Meanwhile I am still trying to find my way around the allnewbrandspanking  savannahnow.com.

I have yet to find the simple chronological listing of ALL stories posted to ALL sections that would, you know, allow a person to see what’s happening without having to remember to check 13 different sections of the site every day.

It took me a couple years to find the list on the old site so this time I figured I would just ask. I used the twitter.

“Hey @savannahnow love the new look but where does a brother go to get one simple chronological list of ALL stories posted to ALL sections?”

The response was less than helpful.

“@SavannahNow @ESTUPIDOSAV Thanks for the question - we offer a daily headlines e-mail that gives you the list you are looking for: http://ow.ly/oF3O”

So ya’ll have a fancy allnewbrandspanking news website, but I have to subscribe to a separate spam email to get the news?

Right.

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.