votewojcik.org

From the National League of Cities:

Washington, DC – The National League of Cities issued the following statement in response to Standard & Poor’s statement on municipal credit ratings: Read the rest of this entry »

I am currently riding in the MS TRAM, but had a chance to post an update or two.  Once again the Minnesota Legislature has failed to live up to their obligations.  Here is a note from City Administrator Stevan Kvenvold on our latest round of budget cuts: Read the rest of this entry »

Here is a note announcing the news from Public Works Director Richard Freese.  These funds will be used to address the much needed rehabilitation of 2nd Street West of Highway 52. Read the rest of this entry »

I received some information about pension plans in Minnesota. There seems to be an anti public worker / organized labor attitude from some in the state.  I do not agree with this sentiment. Read the rest of this entry »

When you write a letter to the editor typically the space is limited, but I wanted to add a couple of thoughts to the letter that was published today in the Post Bulletin. The basic idea that I wanted to communicate is that we need people to mentor to our kids.  We have a huge population of children that need good role models.  If you really are concerned about crime in our community, this is how you can help. Read the rest of this entry »

I strongly believe that we should let the voters weigh in and decide if they feel these projects are worth funding.  I am supportive of many of these projects that will not get done without the extension.

Rochester Sales Tax Information

From the PostBulletin.com.

I figure I should add some context to my statement and explain myself further before I get beat up too badly.

A $2,000 funding request by the Rochester Arts Council appears likely to receive city council support.

Council member Michael Wojcik described the request as “money well spent.”

I do think that this is a good investment, and it also helps that Mayo and UMR are paying for this as well.  We will get a $7,500 study for $2,000.  During the meeting I asked Bari what the long term goal was with the study data, and she responded that it will provide us with a real economic measure of the impact of arts.  As a city this is helpful, because it will help us weigh our investments in the arts and measure the impacts.

Later in the meeting I brought up an unrelated topic where I requested that we look at putting our arts funding and facilities into one organization.  Currently I find that system to be a tangled web suffering from poor interagency communication.  This appears to have strong council support.  I will post more on this later as it is one of my 2011 goals.  This is particularly important to me as my budget analysis shows that we are cutting quality of life amenities including the arts.

This will be the first of a number of posts analyzing what has happened to the City of Rochester’s budget over the last decade.  I have been gathering data regarding population, inflation, budgets, LGA, and taxation.  I am going to tag these items with “decade lookback.” Read the rest of this entry »

Here is a note I received from City Administrator Stevan Kvenvold about public sector compensation. Read the rest of this entry »

Apparently $124,303.82 before additional snow removal. Read the rest of this entry »