Surely, it was a rather anti-climactic end to adoption of the 2008-09 fiscal year budget (or as City Council member Sheryl Cole likes to call it, the “physical year” budget). But as one seasoned newshound commented to Newsdesk, these type of budget deliberations drag on a lot longer when there’s actually some money left to fight over.
The money shot was an infusion of $302,000 in revenue from the higher-than-expected property tax rolls, of which almost $235,000 went to pool funding of social service contracts, with funding for individual orgs to be decided on a scoring matrix. Additional fees (not the same as taxes, dammit!), reallotments, and utility transfers went to fund everything else – most notably, over $4 million in additional transportation user fees (that little ‘WTF is that?’ charge on your utility bill), expanding street repairs to encompass 10% of repair-needing roads.
Much more to come in Thursday’s Chronicle.
This article appears in September 5 • 2008.