Posted by new guy, a resident of the Menlo Park: Downtown neighborhood, on Jun 12, 2012 at 4:27 pm

$65 Million for such a small town. Wow where does all that money go?

Oh, and stop asking for more tax money.

Posted by Bob, a resident of the Menlo Park: Downtown neighborhood, on Jun 12, 2012 at 6:00 pm

Stop copying what the governor is doing by trying to raise taxes to balance the budget. If you want people to occupy hotels, why would you raise the occupancy tax? And what is the city going to do if the tax amount falls short, tax something else? MP should get a clue from the county's most recent election which voted this tax down.

It's bad finance to balance budgets on possible tax increases.

Additionally, local area governments (cites, police, school and fire districts, etc.) need to get on board with what San Diego and San Jose just did to help contain their rising costs otherwise we will see more Stockton situations.

Posted by Peter Carpenter, a resident of the Atherton: Lindenwood neighborhood, on Jun 12, 2012 at 6:05 pm
Peter Carpenter is a member (registered user) of Almanac Online

If you want to find out the free market cost for any city service then just force the city to issue an RFP for that service to be provided either by other agencies or by the private sector - and let the city submit its own full burdened bid including fully funding all retirement benefits on a pay as you go basis. The city will never be the low bidder.

Note that Atherton has recently outsourced almost 80% of its non-police services and did so for a firm fixed cost with a reduction in total annual costs and without an future pension liability.