Results tagged “budget>”

WMATA plans to scrounge up $36 million from a combination of stimulus funds, inaugural reimbursements, surplus reserves and insurance money to deal with its widening budget gap for the 2010 fiscal year, both the Post and the Examiner are reporting.

Metro is once again facing a budget crunch (in the form of a predicted $100 million shortfall) and thinking about raising fares, but this time it's changing tactics just a bit. Instead of soliciting rider input at the end of the process, as Lena Sun points out in the Post, this year they're talking to customers at the beginning. And tonight marks the first public forum on Metro’s proposed 2011 budget.

I've had an office job for years. If I've learned anything, it's that once the boss starts throwing around official statements coded with phrases like "asked to find efficiencies," "leverage resources," and "decreased...revenues," well, you've got problems. D.C. Department of Human Services Director Clarence Carter released such a statement yesterday regarding the massive cuts in homeless services slated in the District's 2010 budget. Carter still appears to toe the Fenty administration line of "what cuts?", confidently stating that D.C. will be able to "meet the full demand for homeless services during the hypothermia season." Unfortunately, in his attempt to put ten coats of wax on this particular budgetary Yugo, he forgot that plenty of homeless service providers are already seeing large reductions in the amount of their contracted work with the city -- and anyone with experience in any sort of corporate setting will read Carter's statement with serious trepidation about the state of D.C.'s homeless services in the year to come. Hey, at least we're certainly not alone in wondering about what Carter thought he was clarifying here, other than burying a sack of incredibly bad news with plenty of heavy semantics.

Councilmember Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6) has sure had a busy start to his autumn. First, he came to the defense of disabled Segway riders who wanted to ride on the sidewalk. Then, he battled the oppressive governmental restrictions on raising chickens in your backyard. Now, all he has to do is work around the District's $20 million reduction in funding for homeless services in the budget for fiscal year 2010, a move that could be quite problematic for the District's network of homeless shelters and service providers.

The final tally is in on this year's Summer Youth Employment Program, courtesy the Washington Post's Nikita Stewart. The program cost $41 million this year, which is "significantly less than last year, when the mayor promised a job to any youth who wanted one, but enough to eclipse similar programs in most big cities." This year's program was criticized less for payroll problems and more for employed kids either doing a crummy job or appearing to be doing not much at all. And of course, remember that the D.C. Council has limited the 2010 program to only $20 million, which would hardly cover the kind of all-inclusive program for which Mayor Fenty has always pushed. For his part, Fenty appears unconcerned: 'Fenty said he is determined to find a way around the council's caps on next year's program. "There's a long time between now and next summer," he said.'

If there's one thing that American politics has hammered into my brain, it's that the people hate tax increases. So when the Post hit the streets to talk to Washingtonians about the tax hikes proposed by the Council last week, there was probably mass carnage, eh? Suffice it to say that reporter Martin Ricard could have left the body armor at the office -- the only thing that would have overcome him was the massive indifference. In Ricard's sample: smokers, who will just buy cigarettes in Virginia; some guy who drives for a living, and will only be able to make five side trips a year instead of seven due to the gas tax increase; and transient interns, who can hardly be bothered about the District's fragile financial state. There are people out there who are deeply concerned about the measures the Council have taken to fix the large budget gap -- but if we take this report as at all indicative of public opinion (admittedly, somewhat of a stretch), it's quite possible that most people out there just don't care that much.

The District is facing a massive budget shortfall over the next several years, but despite proposals to cut more jobs, reduce city services and now even raise taxes, the mayor's revised FY2010 budget still includes roughly $13 million for the upkeep of the city's many vacant properties, the Examiner reports today. What does that $13 million get us?: "... rent, utilities, security and other so-called fixed costs tied to 20 empty buildings in D.C.'s possession," writes reporter Michael Neibauer. Now, several of the buildings that are vacant are schools that were emptied by Fenty as part of his DCPS reorganization, and they'll theoretically be sold eventually. But this headline has to sting for the various agency heads who are once again faced with trying to decide which of their remaining employees they're going to have to fire soon.

The D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue put out a short press release today reminding residents that the annual August Sales Tax Holiday isn't happening this year, so a number of outlets have been reporting the news as though this just happened today. In fact, this decision was made in early May, when the D.C. Council approved the FY2010 budget, which nixed the popular back-to-school and holiday-season sales tax break periods in order to hang on to an estimated $640,000 in revenue for the cash-strapped District. In its release today, the OTR reminded local merchants who have previously participated in the sales tax holiday to ensure that their point of sale equipment is programmed to collect the tax this year.

Despite the weather, it's been quite the unpleasant weekend for local organizations in the wake of Mayor Fenty's newest 2010 budget revision, released late on Friday. Fenty cut approximately $12 million in earmarks for community nonprofits in this version, leaving the budget with a total of $8.3 million in grants for nonprofits -- a significant decrease from the $47 million that was handed out last year.

The unemployment news just doesn't seem to be getting better inside the District of Columbia. Monthly Department of Employment Services numbers are out once again today, and they report that the June unemployment rate was 10.9 percent, up 0.2 percent from the previous month. The District's unemployment numbers have been climbing since December, holding slightly steadier at just below 10 percent for several months before finally surpassing the figure in May. The news comes on the same day that Mayor Fenty has proposed eliminating 250 more city government jobs as part of his latest budget proposal, in addition to the roughly 1,600 he's already cut. DOES says there were 35,900 unemployed District residents in June.

Bad news for D.C. charter school teachers: you may not be getting paid on Friday, according to a story just posted to the Post's website. D.C. missed a $103 million payment to its 60 public charter schools this morning, thanks to some kind of tax revenue shortfall or delay, Bill Turque reports. The District is facing at least a $190 million deficit in the current fiscal year, thanks to shrinking tax revenues due to the recession. The Post story says that charter board officials are negotiating with the city to make some kind of partial payment from contingency funds to help them meet immediate payroll needs.

Two suburban Metrobus lines will begin charging express fares this Sunday, June 28. In Montgomery County, the J7/J9 I-270 Express line will see the fare increase, while in Prince George’s County, the W19 Indian Head Express line will also be affected. Starting June 28, the two express lines will cost $3 with a SmarTrip card or $3.10 with cash. In other Metro money news, WMATA is expected, at long last, to pass its $2.14 billion budget on Thursday.

City Desk is reporting that Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee and D.C. Council Chair Vincent Gray have settled their argument over the $27 million that the Council voted last month to strip from the DCPS budget because of differences in enrollment projections. The Council is voting (any minute now?) to restore $24 million to DCPS in the FY2010 budget, with the remainder being placed in escrow until enrollment counts are finalized in October. Rhee and Gray will also collaborate going forward to create a "uniform method" for projecting enrollment. The Council initially withdrew the money because it felt the projections on which the budget had been based were inflated. DCPS enrollment has been steadily declining for years, but Rhee's budget assumed a growth of about 3,000 students. Rhee countered by threatening that schools would be forced to eliminate teaching positions in order to make up the deficit. She defended the projected enrollment growth, but yesterday conceded in a letter to Gray that, "I cannot guarantee that this will occur.” Strangely, that slight admission seemed to be all Gray needed to release the majority of the money.

In case you haven't been paying attention to the ins and outs of the D.C. Council's recently passed FY 2010 budget, here are some of the highlights. Also see Tim Craig, Gary Emerling and Michael Neibauer for more coverage.

D.C. Wire reports that this morning, the D.C. Council voted to strip $27 million from the DCPS budget for next year, on the grounds that that the original funding projected that school enrollment would grow by 3,000 students, an estimate that's obviously unrealistic. The Council says it will not spend the money now, and voted to place it in escrow, to be released in the fall only if an enrollment audit confirms growth. "Given the enormous budget challenges facing the District in 2010," Chairman Vincent Gray argued, "there needs to be a justification why this increase is warranted."

It's a little difficult to cut through the Washington Times' scare-story, but here goes: as part of his budget proposal, Mayor Fenty has proposed extending an already-existing program in fiscal 2010, which would allow more of D.C.'s prisoners to earn nominal sentence reductions (think days, not months) in exchange for volunteering for work details, exhibiting good behavior, and completing various educational and vocational programs. An expanded early-release program, which Fenty estimates could save the cash-strapped District around $4 million, is certainly an initiative worth serious consideration and debate -- Virginia, for instance, has been going back and forth on a similarly-motivated program for quite some time now -- but it's certainly not a manic rush to release violent murderers and rapists, as the Times' wildly inflated "80 percent of the city's inmates" lede suggests. Quite the contrary: the program is mostly closed to inmates serving time for violent crimes. D.C. Department of Corrections Director Devon Brown also noted that interested inmates would be required to participate in qualifying activities for one month before they became eligible to earn reduction credits. Hmm, encouraging convicted offenders to engage in productive behaviors involving increasing education and getting jobs -- isn't this kinda the point of incarceration?

The City Paper's Mike DeBonis may have the most intriguing news of the day -- under the 2010 budget proposal released today by Mayor Adrian Fenty, D.C. drivers would no longer have to get their cars inspected. Wait; what? Really? Well, kind of. You'll still have to head down to the city's one inspection station for a federally mandated emissions inspection, but no longer will you have to sit through the usual safety inspection that checks everything from seat belts to headlights and brakes. Doing away with the inspections will reportedly save $400,000 a year. Fenty's budget also calls for the DMV to "transition to an online and mail-in only system for vehicle registration renewals." You can currently renew your registration online and through the mail, though certain restrictions exist. What changes are made to adapt to an all online and mail-in system remain to be seen.

Many transit-types are plenty concerned about the impending budgetary cuts at Metro -- a struggle afflicting numerous other metropolitan transit agencies, despite surging ridership. But with the leadership of WMATA considering the idea that Metro could make up deficits by cutting rail service off at 10 p.m. on weekdays, it's sure to hit a nerve with casual, infrequent riders, as well as those of us who usually have our eyes on Metro's budget.

This morning's Post features a roundup of Metro's financial talking points for the year ahead: most notably, that Metro -- unlike VRE and many other transit agencies around the country -- has "no plans for new fare and fee hikes" in the coming year. If Metro sticks to that claim, it will mean an almost two-year span between rate raises, no small feat for an agency constantly looking to rectify deficits.

Less than a month, folks. That's all the time this city has left before untold masses descend to witness Barack Obama's first day on the job. That said, color this resident slightly concerned about this Examiner report, in which the phrase "we're still working on that" is prominently featured. Also, if there's any way that the words "Inauguration," "perplexed," and "logistics" could be kept out of the same headline, that would be great. Yup, less than a month.

The tension between Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee and the D.C. City Council may be a given by now, but the outright hostile language can still be a bit surprising. Last night Rhee testified for three hours with regard to the $100 million budget reshuffling that we wrote about on Tuesday. According to the Post, she was met by Council members' harsh statements and outright threats, "This is a joke," and "You keep disagreeing with [Marion Barry's (D-Ward 8) claim Rhee gives more info to the media than to the council] and you won't be around here too long."

While other school districts like Fairfax County and states like Massachusetts are in the midst of slashing schools budgets and cutting funding for education initiatives, D.C. seems to have found ways to avoid such measures, at least for a while. As we mentioned in the Morning Roundup, yesterday Mayor Adrian Fenty and D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee asked the Council to approve a relocation of $100 million from the approximately $750 million schools budget. According to a DCPS release, the money is to be distributed as follows:

Earlier this afternoon D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty made his first public appearance in several days (since re-injuring his fractured foot) to announce that he had secured funding to keep the D.C. Public Library system open full-time.

So the D.C. Public Library system is facing a $2 million reduction in next year's staff budget. The word is that all city libraries will probably have to close on Fridays, as well as reduce hours on weekdays and close completely five kiosk branches that serve needy neighborhoods. This is bad news. Mayor Fenty has said, however, that he is committed to finding the money to keep the libraries open at their normal hours.

Last week, Mayor Fenty and Chancellor Rhee offered up their FY 2009 schools budget, which at $773 million, is about $23 million less than the current year’s budget. However, because of savings from the scheduled closures of under-enrolled campuses and recent mass firings from the DCPS central office (about $44 million) ,as well as the shifting of special education responsibilities to the Office of the State Superintendent ($231 million), the budget actually increases the amount allocated for schools, from about $493 million to $537 million.

The Washington Post has a fantastic story on today's front page accusing Sen. Mary Landrieu (D.-La.), in her role as chairwoman of the Senate's D.C. appropriations subcommittee up until earlier this year, of forcing an unproven reading program on the District's kindergarten and first grade classrooms in exchange for $80,000 in donations from the company that designed it.

It's Friday, Washington, and reactions are still rolling in to Metro's approval of its largest fare hikes ever. We all knew this was coming, but we're curious to hear if any of our readers actually plan to make changes to their commuting habits come January 6, when the increases will go into effect. Do you think you'll ride Metro any less, or finally make the leap to using SmarTrip? Let us know in the comments.