This Week's Stack o' Council Memos: Budget Woes, Delayed Storm Clean-Up

Yesterday City Manager Mary Suhm sent to the council a financial forecast report in advance of Monday's meeting of the Budget, Finance & Audit Committee. Through December, FY 2009-10 has been a mixed bag of bad news-good news, as in: "General Fund revenues are projected to be $8,559,000 below budget and expenditures are projected to be $8,593,000 below budget." But the devil's in the details found throughout the 11-page breakdown, in which she writes that, yes, sales tax receipts are way down (by $9.4 million) but so too are muni court revenues ("due to a decrease in the number of citations issued"), and, well, maybe it'd be a good idea this fiscal year instead of next to "slow down of growth in the police force." This comes a few days after Suhm asked department heads to suggest deep cuts as she begins prepping the FY2010-11 budget.

Oh, and those of you wondering about when the city's gonna get 'round to vanishing the guesstimated 30,000 tons of brush and debris left over from the Great Snowstorm of 2010, well, it had hoped to have curbs cleared by March 15. No such luck: "The City now estimates it will take until April 10 to finish." The memo packet, also filled with the guidelines for private-public partnerships and other wonky footnotes, follows.

And while I have you, here's one of the more disturbing briefings in the history of the horseshoe: The Relationship between Animal Cruelty and Human Violence, which animal law attorney Yolanda Eisenstein will deliver to Quality of Life on Monday. Is there something we should know about?

Memos 3-5-10