John Musolf's Correspondence With Oro Valley. Re: "Balanced Budget"

John Musolf sent the following email to the town:

Jerene Watson and Stacy Lemos

I recently sent this "balanced budget" email to the Mayor & Council as well as Town staff and local media.

I raised many expenditure questions. Can you please provide answers.

Thank You
John Musolf
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Here's John's email to me:


Art


The kind of response I expected from the Town on my balanced budget analysis.

I have used the Request for Information to the Town Clerk many times to obtain information. The Request for Information provides a citizen with information. It does not provide the underlying reason behind an expenditure.

For example, if I were to send a Request for Information on the expenditure money set aside for the Employee Holiday Party, I would simply receive a printout of the budget line item for $6000 for the expense.

It does not answer any of the questions I raised in my balanced budget analysis:

First sample question:

Is it critical to the town operations that we set aside expenditure money for an Employee Holiday Party especially after giving them (the Employees) two additional holidays Is this an additional way of boosting Employee morale?

Another sample question:

Are the memberships and travel/training expenses required for job certfication or performance or are they discretionary to the operation of the department? Has this been vented and documented?

As Ms. Lemos points out we are a democratic representative form of government. In my opinion, the use of our precious resources do need to be questioned. In my opinion, The Request for Information falls woefully short in providing answers to the underlying justification for a budget expenditure.

Thank You
John Musolf
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Here's the response John received:

From: "Stacey Lemos"
To: "jjmusolf@comcast.net"
Cc: "Council" , "Department Directors" , "Jerene Watson"
Sent: Wednesday, August 18, 2010 4:24:30 PM
Subject: RE: Oro Valley Balanced Budget

Mr. Musolf,

Thank you for your opinions expressed in your attachment. Council has reviewed and approved all of these expenditures, recognizing staff to be trustworthy in guarding the precious resources to be expended and representing you in this democratic process of representative government. You may review any documents and line item expenditures through a request to our Town Clerk, which would be the most efficient use of time in providing you these responses, especially during this time of staff cuts and reductions, saving taxpayer dollars for you to review the documents that exist which staff has already spent a great deal of time compiling during our five-month public budget process.

Respectfully,

Stacey Lemos, CPA
Interim Assistant Town Manager

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Need we say more?