Saturday, August 9, 2008

Aug 7 meeting came and went

And I was at home nursing a broken shoulder, unable to get down to the meeting.

The Tri-Valley Herald covered it, and found some skepticism:

[Q]uestions, written anonymously on note cards and passed to panel members, centered on the issue of Alamo's solvency.

Residents pointed out the unpredictability of the county and state budgets, and the potential for other unknown factors to affect the community"s ability to govern itself.

"Orinda and Lafayette both had comprehensive fiscal analyses . . . so then why does Orinda now need (millions of dollars) in additional taxes to fix its roads?" one person asked. The question, referring to the city of Orinda's ongoing budgetary problems, drew applause from the crowd.

It is up to individual city councils to "control the costs," said Thompson, who added, "If you don't do that, than over time, yeah, you're going to have some problems."

Some audience members muttered under their breaths, indicating that they hadn't been convinced by Thompson's response.


The argument seems to be that the County is better fiscally managed than a City of Alamo will be, and that problems in Orinda and Lafayette are worse than those we have and will see with the County.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

"Drew applause from the crowd." True if you consider 6-8 people clapping to be a "crowd."

"...the County is better fiscally managed than a City of Alamo will be." Yep, but only if you ignore the county's unfunded OPEB liability of over a BILLION dollars!

-Alamo Ron