From the Special City Commission meeting last night (1/24)...

The Commission acted 3-2 to repeal the fire and streetlight special assessments last night.  This is a ten minute video of the discussion after the motion was made.  Another one about the same length will be done uploading in a bit.  What McVoy and Mulvehill refuse to recognize is that these assessments were presented by the former City Manager as a "given" and essentially non-negotiable from the beginning.  They also conveniently forget that the 2012 (current) budget process came on the heals of the aborted attempt to re-establish the city's own police department - with a study to do so prepared for dubious reasons.  Regardless of how you look at it, this was a way to get around the cap that the city is limited in the amount of revenue it can generate by property taxes.  McVoy - so enamored with the prospect of this alternate method of taxation, at one point, prodded the Mayor to go along with a $1 per month assessment, instead of the $5 per month proposed for residential properties.  I have never heard of such a ludicrous suggestion - especially considering that the assessment program would cost $250,000 to roll out and administer.

There was much wringing of hands on the part of McVoy and Mulvehill last night about how the city is starting to look bad as an after-effect of THEIR draconian budget cutting earlier last year, out-sourcing to private contractors and admitting then that it would result in lower levels of service.  The Mayor reminded people that they can now start the new budget with a clean slate and deal with current realities during a "more open" budget review process.