There’s a full day of activity at City Hall today in the second part of the Budget Workshop.  Most people will spend the day doing any number of things but you can always come back and watch as you like via the magic of internet streaming courtesy of our technical friends running the cameras.  Their doing a good job of capturing the players in action.  Watch how the first Finance/Administration portion is hijacked from budget to arguments about the critical statistical data of gnat fly reproduction and the wails of pain how every year another council person asks for this and that and dee odder thing and yet it never happens. If you can stay alert through that maybe something good happens.

Really, there’s limits to this process.  The City Council along with the mayor don’t yet have the tools to look at efficiency yet: not in Public Safety and not in the other various municipal departments so really they are kicking each other around making a show of pushing one another with unspecified prodding as they stare at the floor and look for spare change.

It’ll be interesting however to see if any other Director can match Director Pelligrini in producing an introductory budget document with lower costs.  So far, he was the only one to do so to his credit.  An A to the Director for not needing to be prodded on the realities of the day.  (Schedule and presentations available after the jump.)

The schedule is as follows:

• 9:30am to 11:00 am –  Finance/Administration/Corporation Counsel/Courts
• 11:15 am to 12:00 pm – Community Development
• 12:15 PM to 12:45 – Lunch
• 12:45 pm – 1:00  pm –Office of Emergency Management (OEM)
• 1:00 pm to 2:30 pm – Parking Utility

• Public Safety
  • Fire Department
  • Police Department
• Environmental Services
• Health and Human Services
• Revenue and Finance Department
• Community Development
• Transportation & Parking Utility
• Municipal Court
• Office of Emergency Management