Freshman 15: Rookie Council members offer ways to cut the fat
Wipe out paper transactions, increase car sharing, track down bail jumpers, close tax loop-holes and lease city rooftops for cell-phone antennas. Those are just a few of the 15 ways to leave a budget crisis behind, freshmen Council members Bill Green, Curtis Jones Jr. and Maria Quiñones Sánchez suggested yesterday.
Is your city budget too fat for your income? Need some belt tightening? Mayor Nutter, three rookie City Council members have a solution for you.
Fifteen of them, actually.
Wipe out paper transactions, increase car sharing, track down bail jumpers, close tax loop-holes and lease city rooftops for cell-phone antennas. Those are just a few of the 15 ways to leave a budget crisis behind, freshmen Council members Bill Green, Curtis Jones Jr. and Maria Quiñones Sánchez suggested yesterday.
With the city eyeing a gap of between $650 million and $850 million over the next five years — the trio of Council members said it could easily top $1 billion — Green, Jones and Sánchez detailed a fiscal fitness program of cost cutting measures that could be implemented now. They called it “The Freshman 15.”
Green said the city could do away tomorrow with arcane practices such as sending interoffice mail through the U.S. Postal Service. Green brought an envelope with a 42-cent stamp on it that had been mailed to him from the Fifth Floor of City Hall. Green’s office is on the Fifth Floor of City Hall.
“We need to change the culture of city government,” Green said.
Fifteen of them, actually.
Wipe out paper transactions, increase car sharing, track down bail jumpers, close tax loop-holes and lease city rooftops for cell-phone antennas. Those are just a few of the 15 ways to leave a budget crisis behind, freshmen Council members Bill Green, Curtis Jones Jr. and Maria Quiñones Sánchez suggested yesterday.
With the city eyeing a gap of between $650 million and $850 million over the next five years — the trio of Council members said it could easily top $1 billion — Green, Jones and Sánchez detailed a fiscal fitness program of cost cutting measures that could be implemented now. They called it “The Freshman 15.”
Green said the city could do away tomorrow with arcane practices such as sending interoffice mail through the U.S. Postal Service. Green brought an envelope with a 42-cent stamp on it that had been mailed to him from the Fifth Floor of City Hall. Green’s office is on the Fifth Floor of City Hall.
“We need to change the culture of city government,” Green said.
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