Portland city officials are pulling a fast one on the taxpayers by claiming they are eliminating jobs to cut taxes.
It’s the oldest trick in the book, yet not beneath the braintrust of the state’s most “progressive,” advanced settlement known to human history.
When she unveiled the new municipal budget earlier this week, City Manager Danielle West boasted she was cutting jobs.
West used that old saw to pull a fake on the working stiffs who are paying her salary.
The manager said the taxes would “only” go up a few minor points because God bless her soul she was watching out for them.
West said she was eliminating 74 city jobs to keep the budget hike palatable.
Then came the slight of hand…
The boss isn’t really cutting 74 positions since “many of those jobs are already vacant.”
That’s what you call answering to two masters.
On the one hand West wants taxpayers to believe she’s getting rid of jobs to keep their taxes down.
Yet at the same time she’s afraid that some residents will see red when they hear job cuts as in ‘OMG that means you won’t be able to pick up my trash and plow my street.’
West is also trying to soften the job-cuts rhetoric to keep the employee unions from mutiny against her.
If West were serious about cutting the budget she wouldn’t include so-called vacant positions in her math.
Since the positions are allegedly vacant then there are no tax savings by eliminating jobs that are already unfilled.
If city officials claim they want to cut the budget they should eliminate positions both vacant and filled, more-so the latter to make up for the former, AKA fake cuts.
West claims a whopping 18 percent increase in the police budget alone eliminates several “vacant” positions.
So in reality that huge increase is much larger than it appears.
A tangential question is why the Portland Police Department has vacant officer positions.
In the 1970s applicants were breaking down the doors to try to get into that department, the largest and arguably the most elite in the state.
That in fact is where Mark Dion – who is now the mayor – chose to bring his qualifications from his own native Lewiston to make his mark on law enforcement.
And now they can’t fill positions? You can draw your own conclusions as to why they can’t…
Taxpayers, don’t be fooled by pure bureaucratic nonsense.
