Brain-dead

Serving in public office can lead to severe brain atrophy, according to recently published reports. The study conducted by the Saratoga Springs electorate over a four-year period showed a direct correlation between serving positions of authority in City Hall and an abrupt decline in cognitive functioning.

Using CAT scans, complex equations and logarithms, researchers determined the average weight of the standard city commissioner’s brain decreased by about 10 percent –or roughly 140 grams –each year served at the public capacity. Similar studies conducted on deputy commissioners and department directors showed a similar decline in brain mass, though results varied significantly. Some deputy commissioners with prolonged exposure to City Hall were found to have lost nearly 50 percent of their brain mass.

“Frankly, I was astonished,” said one of the researchers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “One deputy was literally drooling on herself in a corner.”

The landmark study is now trying to link a precipitous decline in the city council’s aggregate intelligence quotient with the observed brain matter shrinkage. And given the recent discussions over an estimated $3.5 million budget shortfall, it won’t be too difficult.

When faced with a looming debt, city officials have the unabashed gall –or mind-numbing stupidity –to suggest they can’t do anything about it except levy more “revenue” somehow. Some even have the brazen, unabashed hubris to suggest all the spending in the bloated 2009 budget is due to “essential services.”

First-term Department of Public Works Commissioner Skip Scirocco claims his budget is already “operating on a shoe string” and that further cuts would create dire circumstances in the city. The threat suggests the city will be wallowing in filth and vehicles will be falling through pot holes if even a dime is removed from the DPW budget.

Likewise, Public Safety Commissioner Ron Kim said there is “no way” he’s going to be able to cut his budget. But no worries, he said; the city can always raise revenues.

That’s right. Raise revenue, a polite way of saying ‘raise taxes.’ Now it’s just a matter of where these taxes are going to be raised. Will it be in application fees? Will it be in property taxes? Will it be in the form of paid parking, or more traffic cops handing out bull-shit tickets?

Not surprisingly, the only voice of reason during the City Council’s discussion about the budget was a tax-weary resident named Albert Callucci, who watched the genesis of city’s mounting debt and was sounding the alarm months ago. Months ago, the pragmatic-minded Callucci warned city officials they shouldn’t rely on VLT aid from the state and suggested a rethinking of what the departments consider essential services.

But these calls fell on deaf ears. The council went ahead and included the VLT aid in the budget, even as the Paterson Administration warned of the impending belt-tightening at the state level. They also ignored something that is now known as the global recession or worldwide economic downturn. These are terms that suggest consumers might think twice about eating out five times a week or buying designer doggie shawls at a main street boutique. Translation: Sales tax receipts are going to dip.

But amid the fog of their collective brain atrophy, city officials instead decided to balance the badly off-balanced budget by raiding the dwindling fund balance. They also fudged a few numbers on the revenue side so that things wouldn’t look so bad. Everyone patted themselves on the back, crossed their fingers and went into hibernation over the winter.

Sure enough, the city is fucked. Not just fucked, but super-fucked. Porn-star fucked even; the kind of fucked that’s portrayed in some of the more salacious gang-bang videos featured in less savory corners of the Internet.

Now instead of planning for a budgetary shortfall, they’re faced with finding a knee-jerk way of filling city coffers before they go empty. And if anyone is doing the numbers, that won’t be very long. Estimates suggest the city has about $3.8 million of unallocated fund balance, which is just a $100,000 less than what the city is set to spend in 2009 if –and this is a big ‘if’ –all the departments stay on budget(pop quiz: Can anyone name the last time the Public Safety Department was under budget?) This is before even considering the city needs to keep a robust fund balance on hand and would have needed to replace what Finance Commissioner Ken Ivins removed last fall to present a zero-tax budget.

So basically, the city council has failed Saratoga Springs in a way that few could possibly fathom. But to place the onus on this gang of jokers is forgetting the ridiculous and frivolous spending of the previous council, which basically threw money into studies about pie-in-the-sky projects the city couldn’t afford even in a robust economy: a $35 million public safety building, a $6 million indoor recreation facility, unnecessary water pipelines to either the Hudson River or Saratoga Lake.

All along, the city was using the VLT aid –anywhere from $1.9 million to $3.4 million of state funding meant to cover the virtually non-exsistent negative municipal impacts of the racino –to balance an overweight budget that made a fat-back sandwich look lean. First it was the Republican Lenz Administration, and then the Democratic Keehn Administration. Now it’s Republican Mayor Scott Johnson who will have the dubious honor finding a way out of this decade-in-the-making disaster while trying to avoid becoming the city’s third-consecutive one-term mayor.

Simply put, there’s no easy way out of this debacle. Despite the sudden panicked calls for paid parking, there’s no way the city will be able to overcome its shortfall without making cuts to its workforce. If that means losing “essential services,” then so be it. The thinning ranks of the common people can’t afford to pay any more to support a city government that is designed as if the average residential income is seven figures. City workers need to be laid off, period. If that means no more street festivals, fine. If that means fewer leaf pickups in the fall, fine. If it means fewer cops on the street fine.

But before the departments punishing residents with diminished services, why not start where the city is fattest? Why not get rid of the deputy commissioners, the most corrupt and useless positions in the city? Eliminating the deputies is easy, as the Republicans demonstrated during the Dreyer scandal. Such a move would save the city roughly a half-million costs, if all five are sent packing.

So then who would run the city’s “essential services” you ask? Well, the commissioners for one. If they’re really interested in holding political office, they’ll need to work for their paltry salaries, not pawn off all the important decisions on political hack thoroughly unprepared to make them. Then perhaps maybe the voters would look beyond the names and political parties running for office and pay a bit more attention to their credentials. This prudence is direly needed these days, as the corruption and political patronage on both sides of the isle has crashed this city’s government into the wall with the force of a formula-one racer. Now the only thing left to do is pick up the pieces.