State funding cuts mean Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak will take another crack at the 2009 city budget. With his early plan outdated — after already being adopted in December by the City Council — Rybak will present a new budget at 1:30 p.m. Feb. 23 in the Council Chambers.
Quoth the mayor:
“The City of Minneapolis has done a lot of work in recent years to pay off debt, reform and restructure City government’s finances, and deliver City services more efficiently. That has put us in a better position to weather these difficult times,” said Mayor Rybak. “But budget cuts from the State will be significant, and will hurt City services to our residents and businesses. Even though our City finances are solid and our budget is balanced over five years, the dire shape of the State budget means we need to put everything on the table and make some hard choices.”
Unfortunately the Mayor is not “putting everything on the table”. Per his statements at his two recent public meetings he is only putting the city general fund on the table and not 1.1Billion of spending outside the city General Fund. And his few reasons for not doing so don’t stand up to scrutiny.
I attended the Mayor’s budget presentation at king Park a week ago. RT does not appear to be open to revisiting the aforegone commitment to 2% increases for all city bargaining units either. This chafes, when most city taxpayers are not looking at increased ability to pay for these raises AND most of the members receiving increases are not city residents. Does this explain the rumor is that RT will be endorsed by the unions and the DFL this time around?