(Updated) Mayor Franklin’s reaction to council includes criticism, exclamation point
June 27, 2008 at 2:52 pm by Thomas Wheatley in NewsMayor Shirley Franklin is none-too-pleased with the city council’s adopted budget that actually lowers property taxes and cuts an additional 2.5 percent from departments.
In fact, she calls it the worst decision she’s seen in her almost-20 year professional career.
UPDATE: The mayor’s office has release a revised statement that has the correct dollar figures and a mysteriously removed exclamation point. Yet no punctuation has replaced it… scandal!
Original statement follows after the jump. Here’s the revised one:
The Atlanta City Council is now asking the Administration to make an additional $14.6 million in cuts without cutting personnel. As I stated earlier, anyone who believes that the City can cut $14.6 million (the proposed Administration’s budget already included almost $60 million in cuts) without laying off current employees does not understand the operations of city government. It cannot be done, responsibly
This is a risky choice in a bad economy and the people of Atlanta will have to bear the burden of the Council’s decision to not do what is in the best interest of the residents, both short term and long term.
To balance the budget on the backs of employees is irresponsible, when they were offered an alternative of a modest tax increase in an effort to preserve gains in public safety and to maintain core services. The Council had the authority to do this but it is an unwise business decision and represents one of the worst public policy decisions I have seen in my 20 year professional career and it will have negative ramifications for the quality of life for the people of Atlanta.
Mayor Franklin’s Statement on Recent Atlanta City Council Budget Recommendations
The Atlanta City Council is now asking the Administration to make $17 million in cuts without cutting personnel. As I stated earlier, anyone who believes that the City can cut $17 million without laying off current employees does not understand the operations of city government. It cannot be done!
This is a risky choice in a bad economy and the people of Atlanta will have to bear the burden of the Council’s decision to not do what is in the best interest of residents.
To balance the budget on the backs of public safety employees is irresponsible, if we are forced to cut $17 million the cuts will include our valued police and fire personnel.
The budget decision of the Council today is among the worse I have seen in my almost 20 year professional career and it will have negative ramifications for the quality of life in this city.
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