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Thursday, September 23, 2010

Deficit, What Deficit?


Once again, we have the Desso-Spain Majority of the town board spending money like it was water during a fiscal crisis. Tonight's meeting agenda includes the second attempt to rehire a politically connected Utilities Inspector hired to inspect Water 14 construction, long since completed. He takes $45,000 a year as a full time employee and keeps those water rates humming.

He retired last month, apparently with an understanding from Lou Desso that he would be rehired part time, you know a double dipper, collecting a pension and a public salary. It's the thing to do in town hall unless the majority doesn't like you.

This week's Advertiser has an article from the Supervisor which expresses concern over the budget situation. The 2011 budget will be released on October 1st. It must deal with a cumulative deficit of $171,000 and perhaps as much as $100,000 plus in new payments to the State Retirement System as a result of the pension system suffering from decreased revenues from its investment returns.

So rather than simply let this one politically connected employee retire, Desso and company keep right on spending by rehiring him part time in a job that should have been eliminated long ago.

We bet some board members are less than enthused about this Desso deal though. They remember the display of arrogance the employee made one evening when being questioned by the board. He walked away rather basically told them to stuff their questions. They probably also remember those supposedly bored under water pipes that were obviously not bored to begin with which he "supervised" for the politically connected water contractor.

Regardless, it's common sense to cut expenses anywhere you can when you face the financial problems we face here. And when you realize that Brunswick has one code enforcement officer while we employ three and a large office staff on top of that, you begin to realize how we got into this fiscal mess.

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