Many items significantly over budget, including a whopping for Transportation Services -57,961.90, SPED tuition, Administration and many others.
Somehow last year's hysteria around the budget crunch post-Dolan's override fail, supposedly requiring major cuts of several high school department chairs and many others (mostly secondary), left an enormous surplus at the end of the fiscal year nonetheless. Really tight budgeting does not work this way. The $350 Million-Dollar Surplus total for the city last year shows exactly how incompetent and dishonest the budget process is here. These financial documents give another window into that as well. There is nothing transparent about this either, as there are many layers of opacity hiding what's really going on despite the strong demand for transparency and their dishonest claims of producing it.
It's way past time for full transparency, with every transaction just a click away from full disclosure. This is our taxpayer money, after all!
Re: Irresponsible Budgeting: Only January and Already in Red on Many Line Items
Agree with you but $3.5 Million surplus.
They don't include money in the budget for necessary things. They blow millions of dollars of surplus money. They call it free cash - not for the taxpayers it isn't. They take it from taxpayers. They don't spend it in the budget. Then they go on irresponsible spending spree. Every year.