Tuesday, February 24, 2009

What to do?

The city has a committee looking over whether the mayor and the city council should have a pay raise, a pay cut, or a pay freeze. Is there really that tough of a decision here?

Committee member John Stainbrook said on the news that in this time that they are asking all the city employees to cut back, the mayor and the council should be subject to the same conditions. True.

One could also look at it from another angle. People are looking at the CEO's of companies getting bailout funds and saying that their salary should be cut by as much as 80 percent. Personally, I think that's not such a bad idea. It's a lot like the captain of the Exxon Valdez. If you were driving the boat when it hit the sand bar, a big salary should not be in your future. Well, when I look around the USS Toledo, I see sand. Sand, a few flowers and some lights on trees.

Friday, February 13, 2009

Sherrod votes yes

So, Sherrod Brown got to cast the deciding vote for the Porkulus bill Friday. He was in Ohio attending a wake and had to be flown into Washington specially to cast that vote. I have a number of questions that I'll be addressing in the coming days, but here's my first...

"When they flew him from Ohio to Washington, did they use a private jet, and if it was a private jet, did the White House use taxpayer money to fund it?"

Budget cuts

The mayor came out and announced his plan this week for cutting the city's budget to cover the $8 million budget gap that has grown to $14 million. Once the announcement hit, it only took hours before a TRO was filed.
One of the cost cutting measures that he announced was in the Fire Department. He said that they will be taking one apparatus out of service and reshuffling the firefighters from that apparatus to cover other areas and times. The problem with this is that in his usual ready, fire, aim method of governance, he forgot to check and see if that would be a violation of the Firefighters' Local 92 contract.
According to the folks at the union, it is. Their contract says that the city must keep a manpower level of 103 line personne each dayl. Unfortunately for Carty, a chunk of his plan's savings comes from the fact that the city would only have 99 line personnel each day.
In general, I'm not a big fan of unions, and to be really truthful, I'm not sure that four people in a city the size of Toledo is that significant, so I'm not sure how much it would jeopardize safety. The apparatus taken out of service would be a ladder truck, which Local 92 reps say would slow response time. I'll give that a maybe bordering on a probably, but again, we have a number of them in service at any given time, so I'm not sure how much it would change things.
What I see as more telling is that this is indicative of Carty's failure to know how things work in the city he's been charged to run and his attempts to short circuit the system. We don't know, Local 92 may have been able to work something out with the city. Perhaps there was a way to reorganize and move some people around to hold the 103.
Had the mayor bothered to talk to them, it might have been worked out. Now, with the city in a time of economic peril as the mayor put it, the city will be spending those precious dollars on lawyers to deal with this. To add insult to injury, if the mayor's past performance is any indicator, the money will go to outside lawyers instead of the ones that the city already employs.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Still waiting

I watched yet another act in Toledo's version of Waiting for Godot last night - starring councilman George Sarantou and Toledo Police Patrolmen's Association President Dan Wagner. Channels 13 and 24 had reports about the city dealing with the $8 million budget gap.
There's talk of layoffs and some of those layoffs may be in the Police and Fire Departments. That couldn't be, could it? We passed the 3/4% the city told us that they wouldn't have to lay off police officers and firefighters, right? But I digress.
So, what is the city going to do about it? Sarantou cited programs that he's hoping the Obama administration hopes to put through. Sarantou said he hopes that money will come to Toledo through those programs and then everything will be fine.
Wagner is planning on going to Washington to meet with Vice-President Biden to explain how bad things are for Toledo cops and try to get Biden's help in getting some money sent to Toledo.
And so, we continue to sit under our tree and wait for Obama.

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Two thoughts

I saw a report on channel 13 last night that there is a low-fare airline looking at locating at Toledo Express, and it gave me two thoughts...
First was a skeptical enthusiasm. The idea of something locating here is always a good idea. Unfortunately, these low-fare airlines seem to be 15-minute flashes in the pan at Toledo Express, so I can only get so excited. In the time that I've been in Toledo, I've seen so many of them open and close at Express that I understand why they have revolving doors on the terminal. Still it's good news that they're considering it. It's not a done deal, so we'll have to wait and see.
One of the things that's going on is that they're looking for startup capital from this area, which brings me to my second thought on the matter. Could somebody go bar the door to the 22nd floor at Government Center? It would be nice to see this business come to Toledo and high on the list of things to do to facilitate that would be to make sure that the mayor doesn't put his hand to this and drive them away.