How about we just stop watering all the grass in the City… that should fix it.

BTW, I think the rest of the city employees got a one time bonus at the beginning of the year. Police and fire has just come later. Not that it matters.

What do you call 5 guys with a big red truck and a lawnmower? Volunteer multitaskers. The way it has always been done in cities with no money.

Mr. Mayor and City Leaders: The core businesses which have provided the Boise tax revenue bubble (Boise Bubble) these past couple decades has popped. Your overbuilt airport is used less every day. You now get very excited about a call center and a non-existent Chinese bus company LOL. You build housing and services for people with no job, no money, and limited potential because the Feds will give you some money to do it. (By gods grace that is not me yet.) But what is your indigent plan when the fed money stops? You are willing to let the military base three squadrons of massively noisy and air polluting jets here, to be flown mostly at night, if it means a few tax dollars. Several national chains are not interested in investing in the area. Lots of cheapo chains like Wall-Mart and its bottom dollar cousins are expanding a little. Pawn shop ads dominate the TV and radio.

So, you must now face the reality that Boise is on the decline. Taxing the heck out of the little people will not get you through that fat retirement you have fostered. Yes, even your retirement could be at stake when the younger generation cuts your bennies. This is not New York, if you tax too much, we will just move to place with a better cost benefit formula. Because you do not have a money press like the Fed, you need to cut now and cut deep. Fuzzy math accounting rules won’t buy much time, and with cities going bust all over the country floating a bond is not like it used to be.

PS, Money saving ideas: Please stop racing the fire trucks to the medical call 20 seconds ahead of the ambulance. It is dangerous, expensive, wasteful, and makes up most of their calls. Perhaps it’s time to start some serious logging and mining again too. I’m sure you can think of many more.

More flim flamery by the mayors of the cities of Boise, Nampa, and Caldwell. You know these clowns meet and discuss wringing more money from us idiots that keep electing them.

I can’t help but notice a huge number of brand new city vehicles. I think this was done so Team Dave could claim they were chasing after the green fuels wave? Many green fuel vehicles also cost a bunch more than the V-6 or I-4 base vehicles. Some are even super expensive electrics? The most basic fleet has always been the cheapest fleet.

The city should contract to subs and shift away from full service on most of the basic upkeep stuff. Nobody can do it cheaper than a small business.

Also consider contracting police to ADA county.

I find it hard to complain when I was not at the budget workshops in 2011 or 2012.

Observations.
-The One Time Compensation in December is interesting. Note in the budget recommendations and elsewhere.
“The $4.1 million, or 3.5%, increase in FY 2013 over FY 2012 is comprised of base and one-time
compensation enhancements for general employees ($1.3 million) and union members ($2.6
million), and related benefits for the funded staffing level. ”

-I wonder about the union issue. Is it pay or monies to establish their own health care trust fund.
“(In addition, the unions have offered to defer for up to two years, until January 2014, the final $1.4 million payment from the City to establish its independent health care trust fund.)”

Read the whole budget.
http://www.cityofboise.org/Budget/PDF/Budget/FY2012_2013/BudgetDevelopmentandAdoptionProcess/FY2012_2013.pdf

Agree with Voter, but not just the Mayor but cut all of his department heads salries too. Think they already put a freeze on raises and hiring, cut each departments budgets by a certain percentage, tap volunteers, cut out all training, travel and conferences (they are already trained) cut out memberships, subscriptions, license fees (lawyers will pay their own yearly bar fees). Do they really need those new cars now?

Increase fines for criminal offenses. Speeding ticket in Oregon is $300. Hear some cities are now taxing soda pop, one making $7 million/year from it. How did Meridian build a new multi-million dollar park? How do they and the county have extra funds to blow? Layoffs? Eliminating unnecessary services/departments? Or have they been blowing money for years and overtaxing us?

I beleive the park in Meridian was built and donated to the City by the former landowner.

@ How do they do it? The City of Boise’s police department is the only PD in the state with a union; Meridian’s police aren’t in a union saving them a ton of money.

And boom there it is. Boise City increased their budget by the 3% so welcome to higher taxes and less services. Don’t do more with less or less with less – do less with more!

Okay, agreed the Sheriff does a good job and they run the jail for all too. Don’t think we need a county fire department. We are lucky to have NIFCI right here and some great volunteers. Just because we have some rotten eggs in the mix doesn’t mean we need to get rid of the rest. Just sayin’ … tired of certain politicians. And the Mayor isn’t one of them.

Zippo really? New city vehicles are kind of necessary right? new Vehicles polute less, save the city on gas, dont cost time and money to maintain. I think most business’s would agree that new vehicles are a cost effective way to do business. This is not where we save money. Yes its shiny on the surface but it pencils out.

The Fancy airport being empty is not a sign of the city wasting taxpayer dollars. This is a recession. less people fly. When the economy comes back, Boise needs to have an infastructure in place to handle growth and culture.
Money well spent I think.

Bonified arguments will be heard. These will not.

LJ: Sharpen your pencil. $$ didn’t pencil out, and will not until the spending is cut. This is not Cali or NY. No more big rich jobs and companies to tax around here… they left town.

My cost cutting ideas are valid and being fulfilled all over the country. I have no apology if they are sacrilegious to a lifetime big spender. Whacking retirements is a very popular and effective cost reduction. You will hear more things in the future that you don’t like, and from a large group of people… get used to it. Even the norenders will turn.

The new vehicles are not base models, thus it was not done like a business fleet. It was done as a green show. Those big diesel trucks do not get good mileage, but they can burn biofuel. They pollute many times the gas engines. Empty 2X airport is from pipe dream that crashed. “If we build it they will come” was some stupid idea about building an airfreight sorting facility here… 500 miles from nowhere in flyover country, when there is already three in the western region.

L.W.-
first let me say that I am having a hard time believing that someone would willingly admit to being a conservative, and also try to state that this is a “liberal city”, both statements I find dubious. This state is as about as conservative as they come, there are other out there to be worse, such as Texas, Tennessee and Utah, but this state still ranks up there in the top ten states to have the most oppressive government, also a person who claims to be “conservative” could not possibly be both conservative and human in this day and age, we as a people have moved into an era that welcomes change and growth, and those to claim to stand against growth and change, stand against the fellow humans.
Second I disagree with your lack of emotion in such a topic as this, if anything the people need to be MORE angry, and more aggressive, this is the only way that the debacle of an ultra-conservative government will listen.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/08/24/camden-nj-to-reboot-police-department-by-new-year/#ixzz24e3FPNvM?test=latestnews