Reply to Tell me why I shouldn’t vote for Ficker...

Forum Index » Metropolitan DC Local Politics

Reply to "Tell me why I shouldn’t vote for Ficker..."

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
He says he won’t raise taxes for the next four years. That means services will be cut. What should get cut? Libraries? Fire Stations? Trash collection? The county funding structure is in big trouble.  We have revenue write-downs all the time now. We can’t fund the schools any less because of the state maintenance of effort law. So that leaves cutting the rest of government services. 80% of the budget goes to personnel costs. Cut people, and services suffer.
[/quote]

The county budget has gone up around 100% in the past 10 years, but the population has increased much less (less than 20%). There's plenty of room to cut spending and still maintain essential services.

For example, the county council allocated money to a non-profit to provide civil legal defense to illegal immigrants. The non-profit said it didn't want it due to some strings attached -- can't be spent to defend convicted violent felons. So the Council allocates the money anyway, and hopes some other non-profit will later want it. Can you imagine running a business that way? Budgeting money even though the recipient won't accept the money? Why spend it at all then?

Plenty of other examples -- county starting their own small business loan program, even though we already have a great federal SBA loan program -- to help businesses who couldn't get such a loan. Maybe if they dont' qualify for an SBA loan, it's a bad business idea?

The county also wanted to get into the student loan business. Why? We have all this at the federal or state level.

And minimum wage increase to $15/hour -- that will cost the county about $30mln/yer in additional costs, while driving some jobs to neighboring Frederick county which doesn't have such a high minimum wage.

I vote Dem just about always, but I'm going Ficker on this one. The other two choices have both been on the Council so long they are term-limited out. No need for more of their nonsense. Ficker may be a bit wacky, but the Council can keep him in check if needed.

[/quote]

No. There is no room to cut the budget without cutting services. I do budget work for the county.  The programs you are talking about are not particularly bright programs. But they are insignificant in the scope of the $5+ billion budget, half of which cannot be touched because it’s MCPS.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics