The Calm before the Storm

It's been a relatively quiet week or so around the city, but don't worry, there's a political storm off shore that's ready to blow in.

With the holiday and the lack of a budget (more on that in just a quick second) to hash around, it's been pretty quiet. Lisa Wong's kickoff generated some disgruntlement from folks who expected a policy speech, but it was about time the white-hot Wong Nation settled in for the long haul.

So, next week things should pick up, to say the least.

Not surprisingly, the discussion will revolve around the budget. Mayor Dan Mylott is expected to drop his budget on the City Council on Tuesday, and the fun should start pretty much right away.

Here's what I'm particularly interested in:

-- Of course, where are the lost positions coming from? Will we be able to discern any kind of prioritizing, or will it be a vague across-the-board kind of thing?

-- At his State of the City address, Mylott said the city would have some kind of stabilization funding in the budget. He hinted last week that might be the case now. Considering the amount of cuts in the budget, I'm betting it won't be there. So, how does the council handle that? Is that The Issue to come out of the budget discussion?

-- How much rhetoric flies between Mylott and the council? This relationship is in tatters, but considering the cuts, how upset will the council be? Probably pretty upset. Expect a lot of "we're under a real time crunch" talk. There will most certainly be some "we're spending every penny talk," probably even if there is some stabilization funding. At SOTC, councilors were talking $250,000 as a good stabilization number. Anyone want to take the over on that number? Anyone?

Speaking of the council-mayor relationship: Is there a chance this is going to get better? Hard to think that'll happen in the next six months. Subconsciously or otherwise, you have to figure most councilors aren't really thinking they need to make long-term goody-goody with Mylott. That's not to say he's definitely gone, but why relationship-build if you don't think you'll need to in six months? What happens if Mylott wins? Do the two sides try to work things out, or they all beyond that? That wouldn't be very good for the city.

So, enjoy the relative quiet for the next few days. The storm hits shore in six days.