Friday, September 28, 2012

A blast from the past. Indicative of current Ramsey council ways and means. Spend profligately, hide it, say you don't raise taxes, fire people to lose institutional memory to become a town run by interns, and seek reelection. A surprise - where the money was shaken from. No surprise, where it went.

Still online. This link. Toys-R-Us. Spiffy new TVs. Instant gratification, as with the family overextended on the credit card.

Good morning, town of Ramsey. Let's all go to city hall, for a show-and-tell presentation.

After you read about the purchases, the scanners being justified, but after reading what Heidi said, note the kicker:

The city plans to spend the funds on new audio/visual (A/V) equipment, including a ceiling mount projector for the COR conference room and $3,600 for a new wall mounted electronic whiteboard for the Itasca conference room.

The COR conference currently has no visual presentation equipment, said Deputy City Administrator Heidi Nelson.

Having the equipment in the room will allow them to enhance the COR presentations and review different development plans on a large screen, she said.

The estimated cost for the COR conference room is $7,000.

New equipment is also planned for City Administrator Kurt Ulrich and Nelson’s offices.

The city expects to spend $3,000 to install wall mounted LCD televisions in each office.

Having the televisions allows them to review the city council recordings and have access to important news media reports, Nelson said. [...]

Following the money

The $30,000 that Ramsey is requesting from QCTV is from the franchise fees and public, educational and government (PEG) fees that cable companies collect as part of their monthly subscriber billing.

The QCTV board, which includes two members from Ramsey, Andover, Anoka and Champlin, decided in late 2010 to allow its member cities to take funds from the individual city’s QCTV capital improvement projects (CIP) fund.

At that time, each city’s CIP had a $40,000 fund balance.

[bolding in original] That's right "the QCTV board ... two members from Ramsey ...".

Who dat? With QCTV available preelection as a potential propaganda tool, who IS on the board now; and with that fund looting as a legacy to leave the next council, who was making QCTV board decisions then, from our town?

And, of a reserve fund, go spend 3/4 of it so Heidi's office has a wall TV. Darren gets a share. All are happy. All are good.