Pots of Money

We have caught wind that WayneWho has become a syndicated un-news source spanning from coast to coast of our great country. We just have to say thank you to all of our readers and those remote bloggers who enjoy reformatting and rediting our articles for their own mass email markets. The WayneWho Staff would like to say hello to all those Simi Valley readers who are now reading our material under a snappy pen name of the person who puts the "tin-foil" in our beanie of collective knowledge. (You can edit that part out for your next e-mail.) Hello to our new readers on the West Coast.

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In an attempt to help spread misinformation and un-news we are going to discuss a couple of items on the City of Kissimmee Commission Meeting agenda for tonight. First we have the second and final reading of the ordinance to expidite the process of creating and raising fees by establishing a catch all ordinace that simplifies the drafting of such fees. (Call that misinformation all you want, but that is the whole point of this ordinance.) As our sydicated column was attacked last week for spreading "misinformation" about the removal of the public from the process of drafting the new fees the city is after, we just have to note one glaring problem with the City's argument. If there is really no difference in the processes, then why are we making this change? The way the process is now, there is a large amount of leg work and public record on the movement and discussions on new fee ordinances. Much like a bill in congress, a new fee ordinance has to pass many hurdles even before the public has a chance to weigh in on the subject. This public information can then be requested by concerened citizens who wish to speak out for or against the fee. The new process provides less documentation for citizens' review making the arguments for new fees a he-said, she-said battle. We know, we know, we are supposed to trust government because they have shown so much honesty and integrity in the past. There have been no such episodes of going behind the back of the public to cyphon off money from the local electric company, sticking the citizes with increased rates so government could once again skip out on its responsibility of reducing its size. Things like that don't happen, right?

Of course all of this discussion of simplified fee making has not slowed down the expenditures of the IT department. The consent agenda contains the approvals for a new HP BladeSystem and VMWare for a sum of more than $93,000.00 and a Cisco Switch/Router for more than $70,000. Anyone want to wager a Granola Bar on if any questions are asked of the IT department as to what this is for and why it is needed? And even if the questions are asked, will any real explanation be given to the Commission? Just approve that $163,000 dollars to upgrade the speed at which staff can play fantasy football and track their weight on "Biggest Loser", the public won't mind.

The end of the meeting promises to be quite exciting with discussions on both the Social Service funding that the commission failed to properly monitor and account for when they removed the United Way from the funding process, and the setting of the Fire Fee under the new expidited system. It is fun to tally the expenditures as we listen to the cries of limited funding. Too bad the public cannot find a way to expidite new revenue for themselves as easily as government does. Wal-mart and the local attractions have slowed their summer hiring, so that second job will be a little hard to get this year.

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