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The City’s financial picture
Presented by Steve Ensley, Ocean Shores finance director, at Monday’s “study session” with the Mayor/City Council. finances Council Study 5-9-11
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9 Responses to “The City’s financial picture”
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You can come and ask him! At least he is willing to step out from the Fort Ocean Shores, AKA City Hall, to talk to the peasants and serfs that work the land and pay their “homage and fealty” and taxes to the city. He at least has a pretty good idea of what is happening financially in the city. Something that has been lacking for years. Give him your question beforehand and maybe he will come with something just for you. Call him.
Will he tell you why so much money is drained from the utility billings?
Late news flash! The Concerned Citizens meeting has been moved to a different location.
THE OCEAN SHORES CONCERNED CITIZENS MEETING WILL BE HELD ON SUNDAY, MAY
22, 2011 AT 3:00 PM, AT THE CANTERBURY INN, SECOND FLOOR CONFERENCE ROOM.
Guest speaker will be Steve Ensley, new Finance Director for the City of
Ocean Shores. All residents are invited to attend this interesting and
educational meeting.
Come to meet and have coffee with your new Finance Director.
For more information, you can all 289-8207
If you have questions about the report, don’t understand it, come to the Concerned Citizens Meeting On the 22nd at the Lion’s Club at 3:00 PM. You can speak to Steve, the finance director. There is a great deal of information that deals with our current situation, the 2012 situation and the 2013 and beyond situation because of property tax laws, current levies and when they expire, and future levies based upon limits set by law. Poor Tom would have to write a new Atlantis book to explain all this in detail. Come, ask and learn. Oh, Yes, Management (council, mayors and former city managers) have caused the problem. However, employees not being flexible about jobs, hours, and benefits have contributed to some of the issues too. It is going to hurt on all sides in the future to get this solved. The one thing that is for sure is that taxes will either go up or cuts will have to be made or both. The city has been living beyond it’s means for some time. The economy has not helped either. Something will have to give soon. 2012 and 2013 are going to be bellwether period.
Hey Tom, gets frustrating don’t it.
I fail to see how “the city’s financial picture” is the fault of its employees. This is the usual cry that’s uttered after there is a gross case of mismanagement whether it pertains to city, state or to the priviate businesses sector.
In my humble opinion the problems lies with the city’s government and the blame (if you must point fingers) belongs to the past and present mayor/city managers, dept heads and of course the city council as they control the expenditure of city funds.
I don’t know about most people but in my book if you don’t have the money you don’t spend it. Things like the roundabout, side walks and fancy street lights, the way over sized fire station, hangers at a little used airport and other projects have run the city’s debt through the ceiling. Even though some were partialy paid for with grants they still cost the city money it didn’t have. It’s time that the city management learned how to say no to the special interest people (yes Virginia we have them here in OS) and to spend only what is necessary to the function of the city on a day to day basis. In essence, city management needs to learn how to say NO and use some common sense approaches to spending.
Jumping on the backs of city employees and blaming them for the problems of Ocean Shores is a really silly old argument that does not hold water. The city needs to stop spending money it doesn’t have or there will be no Ocean Shores to enjoy.
Uhm, while I appreciate the raw datat dump, what if you don’t have excel, or understand what this spreadsheet says? How about a little translation. (I assume that’s forthcoming in an article?)
Really? The city’s financial picture isn’t pretty?
How shocking! Such a surprise! Didn’t see THAT coming! Wow.
Sorry but I can’t feel sorry for anyone who has to make the tough decisions. The state/city employees need to learn a hard lesson: When times are good, you don’t pull up the dump truck and grab everything in sight. And, when times get tough, those same people start all the bleeding heart, “you can’t make people suffer” BS. There has to be some adults at the party to pull away the punch bowl. There’s one answer here: an across the board cut for EVERYBODY that got us into the mess. I have no doubt that we the taxpayers are going to get stuck with bad decisions made in both the good times and the bad. Mostly because, we have no say and we have very few people to protect us from our city government.