Unheard Budget Comment
The following comments were written by a citizen who twice went to the budget hearings to speak.
Due to audio problems on his first attempt, he was unable to hear the Chair ask if anyone else wished to speak.
The second attempt at expressing himself was rebuffed by the chair who brusquely stated that we would have no public participation, we are here to vote on the budget.
Here is the text as written by Mr. Guy D’ambrosio.
“First, I would just like to thank the City Councilors for their efforts, you have a tough job ahead of you. I heard today that our economy is still way behind of where the government thought it would be. And because of this alarming news we as in the City of Methuen need to make concessions, compromises and or cuts somewhere in this proposed budget. The citizens of this community voted you in to make the correct decisions for us all, please keep this in mind this evening.
In these hard economic times government should not be getting larger but getting smaller. I hear people say that our services will be impacted or go away all together. That may be a true statement but we will all share and feel the pain together. That being said, I think we need to start trimming the fat. We need to downsize in lean times just as companies do. In lean times there is no way around it. It takes guts to make the tough call in tough times. I really have not seen any of that taking place.
If we have to layoff then that is what we do. The private sector just can’t go raise taxes.
It’s hard to justify doing more for the Fire Department. At the present time you want 5 more men plus $800,000 for overtime. If it cost so much to maintain the fire trucks and equipment then why is there a fire truck almost daily at Market Basket. It is obvious to the tax payer that the department does nothing to conserve.
Let’s really look into privatizing the ambulance service and the City won’t have to worry about the maintenance of the ambulances. We must make a real effort to cut back.
We just put in a new park. All I hear the DPW Director say is he doesn’t have enough man power to keep up with the parks we already have. How will a park bring in dollars? It won’t.
I know, wait till next year. I don’t think they are going to get better that fast. We will be here at the same point next year.
It is time for changes and now more than ever this is being made very clear.
Because of shortfalls in revenue all we do is raise taxes. We need to make cuts as well.
Raise my taxes and make cuts if you must. Layoffs are not good but it is a fact of life in tough times. In my opinion, this is where we are again. We can’t keep putting bandaids and paper clips to fix the problem, I can tell you it doesn’t work.
We were in the same spot last year and no surpise the econmy really didn’t get any better. It’s time to make cuts and some of those cuts are going to hurt but we have to try. If you look around the neighborhoods every yard with 3 feet high grass is a home foreclosing. Things are not getting better, nor are they anytime soon.
So in closing I urge you all to do the right thing here tonight fo all of Methuen
Thank you.”