Michelle Harris, 8th: “Here in our budget today, which includes no cuts in public safety, I think our budget is equitable.”
Richard Mell, 33rd: “It may have been easier to grab more money in some of the different rainy day funds, but that was not what you wanted to do. It wasn’t just one agency that got all the pain. It was equally shared.”
Joe Moore, 49th: “In the last several years, I voted against proposed budgets because more than anything else, I felt they were not honest…This is an honest budget. It meets head on the challenges we are facing…unlike previous years, there has been an open dialogue between members of this body and the mayor.”
Pat Dowell, 3rd: “In this, the library will stay open. The quality of life issues along our commercial corridors in my ward will be addressed.”
Ariel Reboyras, 30th: “This budget was tough, it was hard, but sacrifices had to be made to balance the budget. When it came to our libraries, my colleagues heard you loud and clear. I don’t like cuts, but we need to set up a budget not just for 2010, but the next 10 years. With the passage of higher water and sewer rates, we will have infrastructure improvements. If we don’t do this, our streets will stink.”
George Cardenas, 12th: “Our current financial path is unsustainable. The credit agency knows it. The administration knows it. Our inability to deal with these tough decisions would yield higher financing costs…Mayor, in the next 20 years, we will save a minimum of $40 million from the decisions you have made.”
Michael Zalewski, 23rd: “Many of the new fees are exactly the problems we hear about -- the weeds and the vacant lots and the speeding through neighborhoods. They want more police.”
James Balcer, 11th: “We haven’t raised property tax, there’s no sales tax increase, no fuel tax increase.”
Scott Waguespack, 32nd: “We’re all looking for good government. We all want to take a proactive approach, and I think this budget, despite some of the misgivings we have, addresses those important issues, from TIF reform to those looming pension issues.”
Buy this book! Ward Room blogger Edward McClelland's book, Young Mr. Obama: Chicago and the Making of a Black President , is available Amazon. Young Mr. Obama includes reporting on President Obama's earliest days in the Windy City, covering how a presumptuous young man transformed himself into presidential material. Buy it now!
