It’s that time of year again when protesters line up outside City Hall, public comment gets intense – and sometimes colorful – and council meetings drag on into the night: City Hall released the 2012-13 city budget Thursday. The proposed budget includes the elimination of nearly 286 city positions and – unlike last year – does not include use of the general fund “economic uncertainty” reserves, according to a city press release Thursday. “This is not the budget I had hoped to recommend to address next year’s structural budget deficit,” City Manager John Shirey said in the release. The City Council will begin to address the budget in public hearings May 1. “Our big focus now is the budg

Did you know that 57 percent of California voters want a third party alternative?  While the idea may seem pie-in-the-sky, it's not.  Just like the dot-com and housing bubbles that suddenly popped without warning, it can be difficult to grasp where we are at our current point in history. I'm here to tell you that there's a revolution coming, but it's not going to be of the Arab Spring sort.  Instead, it's going to come from people like you who decide that even though they have a viewpoint, collaboration is better than competition.  Our political system - whether in Congress or the State Capitol - has simply lost the capacity to solve problems.  And it's no coincidence that it seems like t

The City Council is allowing the city manager’s office to explore new ways of closing the city’s $35 million - 40 million budget gap, including employee pay cuts and benefit rate hikes. The strategies include a 5-10 percent pay cut for all city employees. The City Council unanimously decided on Tuesday to allow city staff to consider a range of ideas for closing the budget shortfall. Councilman Steve Cohn said that examining several options for budget cuts does not mean that he supports them. “I’m fine with looking at a whole potpourri of different ideas,” Cohn said. “I don’t want that to be mistook for supporting any particular strategy at this point.” The city would need to reach an

At least 725 county employees will be laid off as a result of the county budget approved by the Board of Supervisors Thursday in a 3-2 vote.  The board has now balanced its the county's budget, which had a $181 million gap. The total budget for the 2010/2011 fiscal year is $3.5 billion. Of that amount, $1.9 billion makes up the county’s general fund. Supervisors held lengthy meetings on the budget over the course of four days this week. Supervisors Roberta MacGlashan and Roger Dickinson voted against the budget’s general fund allocations, offering different reasons for why they disagreed with the budget. Supervisors Don Nottoli, Susan Peters and Jimmie Yee voted in support of passing th

When you take a job, how much does your salary factor into the reason you accept?   While watching the morning news on New Year's Eve, my eyes widened to see the letters "IOU" go across the screen. According to the State Controller, John Chiang, legislators may soon be seeing IOUs instead of paychecks. This could happen as early as Feb. 1 due to the state's budget problems. If you were to begin receiving IOUs from your employer, how would you feel? Would you continue to work? Do you think this is a fair way for the state to allocate its money and alleviate further debt? Do you think that legislators are doing a service for the state and therefore should be the first ones impacted by t