At Tuesday night\u2019s (0ct. 6) Kent City Council meeting, Operations Committee chair Tim Clark delivered a clear message from the City Council to the mayor \u2013 it\u2019s time to acknowledge the growing gap between the mayor\u2019s budget and reality.<\/p>\n
(See related story page 3, which includes comments from the Council.)<\/p>\n
I\u2019m glad to see that the Council is recognizing what I\u2019ve been saying for months \u2013 that the budget numbers coming out of the mayor\u2019s office simply don\u2019t reflect reality. The city is in an economic crisis, and we can\u2019t begin to fix it until we acknowledge the scope of the problem. Burying your head in the sand won\u2019t make it go away.<\/p>\n
The numbers are frightening. The city has spent $12 million more than we\u2019ve received in revenue so far this year. Month after month, sales tax revenue has come in below the administration\u2019s projections. To keep their budget balanced on paper, the administration is forecasting a huge economic rebound by the end of the year. It defies common sense and reality.<\/p>\n
The cost of ignoring the problem gets bigger every day \u2013 more layoffs, more cuts to critical services, and a reduced ability to respond to a crisis. How will we handle a flood with no money in our general fund?<\/p>\n
In the end, this story is about more than numbers on paper \u2013 it\u2019s about the city\u2019s ability to use taxpayer\u2019s money responsibly and continue to provide services to our community. Unless we change the way the city does business, we won\u2019t be able to do either of those things.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Jim Berrios<\/p>\n
Candidate for Kent Mayor<\/p>\n
Kent<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At Tuesday night\u2019s (0ct. 6) Kent City Council meeting, Operations Committee chair Tim Clark delivered a clear message from the City Council to the mayor \u2013 it\u2019s time to acknowledge the growing gap between the mayor\u2019s budget and reality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-23006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-letters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23006"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23006"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23006\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23006"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=23006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}