Jan

18

Carnage at 12th & Oak

January 18, 2005 |

City Manager Wayne Cauthen shook up City Hall again today with a proposal to consolidate several departments and cut almost 100 positions, saving $6 million in a city budget that often runs tens of millions out of balance.

While certainly painful for city workers, it’s a needed dose of bitter medicine. The city has had a budget imbalance for years. During the recession other governments and companies froze salaries and slashed payrolls to help balance budgets, but Kansas City went the opposite direction by increasing salaries.

Cauthen’s proposed 2005-2006 budget now goes to the City Council for consideration, where the next few weeks of political wrangling should be very interesting.


Comments

3 Comments so far

  1. Sportster on January 18, 2005 9:48 pm

    Sic em Wayne! Given the City’s overt disdain and stark inability to provide even the most basic of city services, I’m curious as to how this will affect/effect response times by city representatives from Neighborhood Preservation, Codes
    and / or Env. Mgt. (oxymoron implied)
    This was coming - and Fat assed - do nothing Dept. heads
    should have seen this train coming a mile away. ‘Specially
    after the “shake up” last year.
    There’s an old saying: “Its all fun and games til someone gets
    hurt”.
    Well in his case, “Its all fun and games til YOUR ox gets gored!

    Sportster
    …cuttin thru departments like hot butter!

  2. dtkc on January 18, 2005 10:05 pm

    Sportster, I don’t understand where your cynicism comes from.

    I have always gotten very good services. The Action Center is one of the best things my tax money goes to. If there is a pothole, metal plate, water leak, code violation, whatever - just call them up and they will figure out what department is responsible. Then it’s usually fixed within a few days or so and they send you a letter to follow up. If you submit a problem online you can even get a ticket number to track the status on the web site.

    I have lived all over the region (Joco, Northland, Downtown, Waldo) and can say with experience that KCMO isn’t any better or worse than the suburbs. Sure it’s worse a few things and better at some others, but overall it’s very comparable.

    So what’s your problem Sporster? Are you one of those old folks who is so bitter about the friggin “free” trash bags that the city can’t do anything right in your eyes?

  3. Mark on January 19, 2005 8:15 am

    I’m with dtkc on this one. It’s easy to slam the City for things, much harder to point to specific problem areas while not condemning the whole. I disagree with lots of things the City Manager has done, or plans to do. Having said that, I’ve worked closely from the outside with many folks in Neighborhoods and Environmental Management and know how hard they work and how dedicated they are.
    The City is not much different from any organization of its size in that it has some bad employees and some absurdities that grow from the bureaucracy necessary to run an organization of that size. It is different in that everything it does is open to the public, so the price of trying something and failing is much higher. That’s what I like about Wayne Cauthen: he’s not afraid to look bad to the public if he makes a wrong decision.
    I’m kind of amazed that you can call Environmental Management “do nothing” right after RecycleFIRST was launched in what’s probably been the smoothist and most successful implementation of curbside recycling of any city in the country.
    This comment turned out longer than I expected, but people slamming the City is one of my pet peeves. It’s easy to criticize, difficult to criticize meaningfully. So Sportster, if you’ve got a specific complaint, name it and propose a solution (including funding). If not, then keep it to yourself. Slamming all of City Hall does nothing but hurt everyone.

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