Council: JUST SAY NO!

This is one citizen speaking, but I believe I speak for the majority.

Dear City Council Members,

The budget submitted to you by Mayor Mylott included a provision for adding trash removal fees in order to fund the proposed expenditures. As some of you have publicly remarked, any budget with such a contingency is NOT a balanced budget, as the Mayor is statutorily required to present to you.

The City Council is under no obligation to consider an unbalanced budget proposal. However, once you begin reviewing and whittling at the document as submitted, you own it.

Mayor Mylott knows this proposed budget is unrealistic. He knows that he has proposed cuts that strike an emotional chord with the community while simultaneously adding an average of 13%+ to the department managers' salaries, something that would cost us an additional almost $200,000 per year - forever - and almost FOUR MILLION DOLLARS over the next twenty years.

This MUST stop! Many of us believe that the first step that should be taken is for the Finance Committee and the City Council as a whole to simply reject this ridiculous unbalanced budget and send it back to the Mayor for revision, with return due within 5 days.

Please don't argue, don't play for the cameras, and please do not even consider the current proposed budget as submitted.

Just say NO!

It's the right thing to do.

Shalom