Pin the Tail

There is currently a special documentary film about Section 60: Arlington Memorial Cemetery airing on HBO. You can read more about it by clicking here.

I always think about my Grandfather and Great Uncles at this time of year…all of them WWII veterans. I have a handsome group photo of them all in uniform— Uncle Roy’s sleeve is carefully pinned up because he lost his arm as a tail gunner…for a time no one knew where Uncle Matt was and I have a letter my Grandmother wrote to her sister-in-law, my Aunt Mabel, expressing her worry and describing the waiting while she raised my father and his little sister alone…

As my father often says whenever the occasion calls for it, our veterans and military personnel fight to “make the free world safe for democracy.”

And, like my father, I believe it is time for our troops to come home.

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Council completed the last steps for the budget process last night. I did not make it to the meeting– Baby Finn and scheduling challenges prevailed to keep me home. It sounds like all went smoothly.

There is, however, some very interesting commentary online over at the H-T forum. Perry Township Trustee Dan Combs wrote the following:

“The Council is out of line on Indian Creek Township. They have no jurisdiction to recommend anything but levy rates. To recommend a budget cap out of surplus monies already Indian Creek already in the bank is a blatant power-grab and pure posturing and pandering to the people upset with the Township. I do not have any interest in that disagreement except to preserve Township Board integrity and jurisdicition. The Council isn’t too good at budgeting for the County. Until they get a statuatory charge to interfere in others budgets they should butt out. Perry has a good surplus and we fund lots of things out of it. The county should never, ever, interfere in other units business. Especially since their track record on their own budgeting is so, um, shall we say “Less Than Stellar?”

That is just the first of his comments– a short dialogue continues online.

I would tend to agree with Dan about the “less than stellar” grade he gives County Council for budgeting— assuming that he is talking about this year’s process for setting the 2009 budget. I’ve already described my criticisms of the process in many posts here on pin-the-tail.

In my final analysis of whatever role I was able to play in shaping the 2009 budget, I’m glad that I spoke up vehemently about the Parks position needing to be restored, got a little extra line and appropriation for Sexual Assault Response Training successfully created for the Prosecutor…and moved for a little extra money for potential zoning software purchase. I feel that had I not been there at the meetings, these things would not have happened at all. Those motions that I made created statements of values— and that is the real work of the elected Council members: to create a budget that is a picture of values, or, valued priorities as expressed to us by our constituents. We are not there to micromanage— and that is the point I think Mr. Combs is making…

The summer annual budget hearings began in August (this does not include preliminary Work Sessions) and at that point, Baby Finn was only a few weeks old by “adjusted age” calculations. Baby Finn is now approximately twice the weight he was back then…

My little 14+ pounder is smiling in his sleep. Maybe I will too!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 11th, 2008 at 9:19 pm and is filed under Current Council, WAR, TAXES, democracy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.