Tweed
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Saturday, September 17, 2011
Should Public Decide How to Spend Public Dollars?
Here is a unique idea by four members of the City Council who are proposing to let members of the community decide how they will spend their descretionary funding. Under the proposal, constituents in each of the four Council districts will be enlisted to develop and choose among proposals for local capital projects like street repairs, new parks and public artworks. Three Democrats, Brad Lander and Jumaane D. Williams of Brooklyn, and Melissa Mark-Viverito of Manhattan, and one Republican, Eric Ulrich of Queens, are taking part. The spending could be worth millions of dollars. The question is will others follow? Of course, this is our money they get to hand out like they are druken sailors.
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This sounds like another politicized advisory board that will end up like the useless community boards.
ReplyDeleteLeave it to some city council members to think up another layer of appointments to involve themselves with. It will only produce more patronage.
I would not trust these proposed neighborhood assemblies to be independent of the morally repugnant politicos who appointed them.
ReplyDeleteThe assemblies would be like our city's current local Community Planning Boards, which really exist as window-dressing for the decisions of the politicians. So you can be sure that the individuals chosen by the City Council Members will function as little more than rubber stamps, and we already have more than enough of those.
Just what we DON'T NEED is a new level of government bureaucracy. I never understood why city, state and federal lawmakers are giving out money in the first place. Their job should be legislation only. It's time to END LEGISLATIVE PORK!
ReplyDeleteUse less or not, Community Boards already submit capital and expense priorities to council members and city agencies.
ReplyDeletelegislators should legislate ... and nothing more
ReplyDeleteI just read that Washington D.C. Council member Vincent B. Orange, who appears to be angling for a future run for mayor or D.C. Council chairman, wants to limit council members to two consecutive terms but make their jobs “full-time” and raise their salaries to as much as $170,000 a year.
ReplyDeleteLuckily, New York City already has term limits and no need to pay our slobs that much money.
It would be great if we had term limits in the state legislature so we could replace the ghouls who currently represent us in Albany but never seem to go away. So many of these state lawmakers were installed in special elections and remain in office because the system is designed to preserve and protect incumbents.
ReplyDelete