CONGRATULATIONS TO THE WINTER SPRINGS CITY COMMISSION !
After 13 years of pure manipulations by the City's commission/management the reports coming forth from the February 26th "Visioning Workshop" have shown a TRUE -- for once -- opportunity for the City's citizens to express their thoughts without interference by the members entrenched on the dais. The breakdown of "citizens committees" without ANY interference by "politicos" show an honest approach to what SHOULD be done within the boundaries of the City of Winter Springs. This should be a very healthy mode of actions by the City.
Previously one would NOT have found such a committee without the dominance of a commissioner/mayor/city management when discussing very important issues. The absence of the "can-do-no-wrong" commission members must have been a very enlightening experience. No need to expose those of the previous domineering forces, but it was always there as enforced by the city manager to make sure his projects/programs were marshaled through all those "politically appointed" committees.
So, unless other reports come forth opposing what PFGG has found we shall continue to see what the final outcome of this "workshop" will be since it obviously doesn't address any monetary, or budget intrusions. PFGG shall continue to monitor this project, and endorse it as long as the citizens are given a fair, and highly vocal position in what their City should be, and be a part of it's future! The voters of last November (2008) may have made their BEST choice, and the new members on the dais should continue to follow that mandate.
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GRIM And Bear It !
PFGG has already pointed out the fact that the City of Winter Springs is going to have a [ "VISIONING" ] commission workshop to figure out what they want to do with the city's/taxpayers' future revenue from your tax dollars rather than get serious about how to pay for it, or in other words put their planning ahead of even knowing how they -- the commission & mayor --- will afford their future grandeur ideas. Oh yes, they ARE going to have a citizens "budget committee" formed sometime to bring to them the citizens' side of how their tax dollars SHOULD be spent even though they didn't use the last one presented to them.
Hey, no big deal look what good ole' conservative governor Charlie Crist did. He went to Washington, and latched onto $8.9 billion more tax dollars ( 3rd biggest bailout of Obama's "57" States) to pass on to struggling cities, who can't even budget their money themselves. This is one of the former commission/city manager ploys of "putting-the-horse-before-the-cart", or in this case "dreaming-without-money". Shouldn't they be planning on how to fix the over 50 year-old streets, and dilapidated old sewerage system throughout the City? Wanna' bet they'll call this double-taxation --- GRANTS?
They just spent over $57,000 dollars to beautify the ends of mediums on SR454 ( 10 total ) with bricks, tapered curbing, and just plain wasting money in the name of "The Towncenter Zone". That's not going to bring more shoppers to it to spend more money so they can pay for their "DREAMS". About five plats of shod, and a little of hard work would have cost around $3,000 to $4,000 dollars instead of the expensive plats of bricks used, which pictured shows around three plats per end. It would have been no harder to mow an additional 64(?) square feet of grass instead of those brick displays with tapered curbing.
Now they'll tell you the bricks didn't cost anything, because they were left over from another project. That's a real laugh --- who was monitoring the other project for cost over-runs since SO MANY bricks were not needed, and PAID FOR? If that many bricks WERE left-over from a previous contract the designer/architect/construct company made ADDITIONAL money using your tax-dollars without ANY OVERSIGHT of the project from city hall. This is typical of the government in Washington DC, and as ALL pundits would say --
"IT ALL STARTED BY POLITICIANS, POOR MANAGEMENT, AND COST OVER RUNS AT THE LOCAL MUNICIPAL LEVEL !
It shows that the politically energized politicians at the local levels take their tricks of the political trade on up the ladder --- spending your money all the way -- until they have achieved their goal of applying the tricks of the trade on the Federal level. Now they have achieved the -- A (abusive) --- B (brazen) --- C's (corruptive) -- ways of a typical politico of National stature. Do you think that your troubles are strictly related to the NATIONAL level look at what's going on in your state's capitol -- TALLAHASSEE, Florida. You remember when "good-ole'-boy" Charlie Crist was a "conservative politician" merely running to be governor of the State of Florida? Well, take another look at a columnist's article from a VERY liberal news media the Orlando Sentinel. Visit this article as written by Mike Thomas in the February 24th edition entitled [ "For $12 billion, Charlie Crist will hug you, too" ] ----- HE SURE IS RIGHT !
That's just one leg of the Federal Government's intrusions upon the taxpayers' --- (legal taxpayers -- not tax-dodgers in Obama's executive cabinet -- several of them) --- of the excessive spending that is going to filter down to the "local level" in the name of a "stimulous package". Now maybe the City of Winter Springs would like to gobble up some of this TAXPAYER money such as in the name "improving" un-necessary money of over $56,000 TAX DOLLARS to improve the ends of the medium in the "Towncenter ZONED" properties. We have the figures it cost for a PALLET of BRICKS as opposed to a PALLET of SOD -- so don't gives us the baloney it "was left-over from another project" --- the city STILL bought and paid for those pallets of bricks!
Go ahead city -- email us [ winterspringsfl@cfl.rr.com ] the ACTUAL COST of whole that boondoggling waste of taxpayer money project -- with your answer. Anybody in city hall have to guts to expose the TRUTH? We will publish your answer as submitted. Oh yes, include the cost of tapering the curbs -- plus the FULL cost of the project's man-hours spent on a not-needed waste of the scarce people's tax dollars.
The answer would interest the over 51,000 monthly visitors to our website.
We're sure -- they'd like to KNOW THE TRUTHFUL FACTS!
It
will show that the politically energized politicians at the local level will
take the tricks of the trade on up the ladder -- spending taxpayer money all the
way -- until they include applying the same of that of the Federal level.
They will now have achieved the ABC's
(A - abusive, B - brazen, C - corruptive methods, and ways of the typical
Politics Of
National Stature based in Washington, DC.
So why waste time and money in a
"VISIONING WORKSHOP" when you don't even know how
to pay for the even the next budget? Get practical -- find out how
you are going to continue the high overhead you currently have as the result of
previous city government, and management who took a 1996 budget of just over
$6,000,000 million dollars to the current
budget of over $74,000,000 million dollars
without even the growth to pay for it without taxing the hell out of the
citizens as is currently being done. Anyone that says that's
NOT TRUE is telling you just a plain outright
LIE!
The City of Winter Springs has the
highest
service taxes
in the State, and even had to
re-finance
old almost paid bonds to feed the greed of the previous
administration --- That's A
FACT!
This is just a GIMMICK --- see [ VISIONING ]
This has some of the former commissioners' -- nothing-between-the-ears -- type of suggestions!
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