Tag: budget amendments

Annual tradition: fantasy budget cuts

fclocalyokel4 Comments

In case you are new here, every year Kirby comes up with “fat” that we can trim from the budget (also Tony and Billy, but mostly Kirby) in the form of unicorn and rainbows amendments. He proposes a bunch of stuff without knowing really what this money does or what happens when we take it away. Like today when we tried to cut the money for library staff at Walkersville and Myersville. Oopsie-daisy-dummy. (Failed) Sometimes he has to pull his own amendments because he didn’t know what they were. Weird how that happens.

Just as long as you don’t become the County Executive, do whatever.

We breezed onto the scene right about the time Billy tried to suspend the rules and let The Yellow T-Shirt Brigade take over. We expected shenanigans and malarkey, because Billy was involved, but in reality this was the Career Firefighters’ Association, and their presence there and contributions everywhere are very much appreciated by Local Yokels and all of our friends everywhere. We are very pleased that our assumptions are wrong, because they were somewhat dark, based upon Billy’s Twitter feed and the black hole of intellect that can drag a yokel into. On the upside, Billy Shreve’s State Senate page only has 35 likes, so we may be free of his torment soon.

Something like this scene occurred (text transcript)

Kirby just got petulant because they don’t want to cut $$ for MET to go do theater programs at schools with high percent FARM (that’s free and reduced meals, if you don’t know the lingo) lunch kids because they had no problem voting down a quarter mil for Classical Charter.
M.C.’s reply: We haven’t voted on that yet.
Kirby: Well, the last two years!
Yokel text: Oh my God. You know what we should do? Find the post we wrote about his amendments last year and see if it matches up. Just to prove what a dead horse beater he is!
Man, oh man. Even the broken sidewalk budget cuts are part of the historical record! (Tonight Kirby explained that he had made a handshake deal with the mayor of Emmitsburg and he’s going to split the cost of the sidewalk repairs. M.C. was as uncomfortable as we would have been not knowing whether or not Mr. Mayor had agreed to this, but Jerry counseled that it was Kirby’s D and if he didn’t want to fix the sidewalks one way or the other, that would be his problem in the end. So fine. That all works out spiffy.)
But enough about Kirby, because Tony Chmelik got in a complete snit over $45,000 for an administration position in the Office of Economic Development. Since they’ve been doing a grand old job, even though they haven’t filled a position, but have needed to for four years, it’s obviously fine to continue overworking people there who are covering that shift, so to speak. Surely nobody who is doing extra work all the damn time will find a new job where they don’t have to put up with that. Right, Billy and Kirby? Suggestion: you volunteer your time, just like teachers do when they are grading and planning and documenting after school and on weekends, and sacrifice pay for being useless human bookends to the council since you apparently earn money for other things that you do in life. The pay of two marginally sentient council persons will cover one administrator in the OED. Problem solved! Also, tons of egregious mansplaining from Tony Chmelik here. The Lady Yokels felt that Helen Propheter was a particular heroine tonight, because who wants to be treated like that IN PUBLIC for their job? Nobody. Billy and Kirby also had “contributions” to this discussion in the form of: won’t we need to build all the houses you keep telling us to stop approving? NO. The answer is no. Some people already live here and could work closer to home, and would even like that. Question: what if we just made Jefferson TECH Park make the leap from fiction to nonfiction?
Jessica is a hero tonight, over and over again. Every time Kirby and Tony tried to snip, snap the budget she jumped in, diplomatically, like an excellent teacher, to guide them toward the information showing that they are so very, very wrong. For all her hard work this evening we present her the following award:
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We are also happy to report that Bud landed on the side of county employees by helping to defeat Kirby and Tony’s austerity amendments. Nice to see you back on the team, Bud!

It’s your drinking game time. Again. Have mercy.

fclocalyokelLeave a comment

Grab your agenda and brace yourselves. As always, you play this game at your own risk. Certain Council Members want to slash the Fire/Rescue budget so don’t count on anyone coming to save you!

Will there be public comments?  Assuming proper procedures won’t be followed regarding the budget adjustments, help yourself to a hole in the head. Might as well have a second one when Billy abstains from voting on the budget items. Double up if he actually votes yes or no. Robert’s Rules are still so hard.

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I’m just not sure how much more nonsense we can take.

There are 2 meetings worth of minutes to approve. Flip a coin to see how Billy behaves here, too.  Drink a tapeworm. It matches the intellect of the I won’t do my job to make a statement be the council’s fool mentality.

More housekeeping to attend to with the approving the County Executive’s appointments. Don’t drink anything but water, here, because there’s plenty to take on later and you are certainly already staggeringly intoxicated due to Billy’s obstinance alone. And this brings us right up to…

…the Kirby Mistakenly Believes he has Big Boy Ideas (Again) section. You will recall that we still have these budget amendments to consider. If any of them pass, put on your thinking cap.

 

You will need it, because up after the break is the solar bill. The efforts to pass any legislation regarding solar facilities have also caused a ridiculous amount of histrionics, disingenuous grandstanding, and flat out stupid accusations, mostly from Billy. However, his buddy–you know the one–is not blameless here either.

If you are still conscious, keep something good in your hat holster, because The Second Reading Calendar includes Jerry Donald’s Dog Tethering bill, and Jessica Fitzwater has a bill about moderately priced dwelling units. This means our two infamously scholarly council members (just ask Kirby) will need to school the, um, less academically inclined. We thank them for their good service on this Teacher Appreciation Week. A teacher’s work is never done.