Pages

Tuesday, December 7, 2004

City Budget Gnashing

As our readers will know, we've pointed out some pretty ridiculous ways that the city of Grand Rapids spends its money. Now, last week the city manager, Kurt Kimball, went to the City Commission to say that the city needs to restructure the way it spends money.

He says that by 2010 the city will be in a $80 million hole. In addition, if the state reduces its revenue sharing, the hole will be $130 million.

Surprisingly, the focus is on cutting spending, not raising taxes (so far). Kimball's quote in the Grand Rapids Press is: "The question is when, not if, service levels will need to be reduced."

Perhaps there's some light at the end of the tunnel?

As we've pointed out in the past, residents of Grand Rapids already pay the second highest taxes in Kent county. And what do we get for it?

Maybe the city fathers will finally get the drift and look at the spending side of the income statement instead of the revenue side. Higher taxes only continue to push residents and business out of Grand Rapids.

No comments:

Post a Comment