Is City Council wasting $ on mag subscriptions?

Are most of these mags already at the Library across the street?

Moderator Jim,

Napervillites are paying huge money (dwarfing the City Hall WSJ bill) to the State of Illinois in tag renewal fees that were jacked up by Convict Ryan a few short years ago.

This money was to fix the roads and bridges, does it all disappear when it reaches Springfield?

Where does it go and why should we support the new effort to raise our taxes to fix what we already paying for?

New Blog with your article/s from last week?

PS Why do female stars practice self immolation at the peak of their success?

Moderator Jim to Anonymous: I would imagine they're all over there at the library. And I agree, Illinois taxes are outrageous. By the way, what did you mean by your last sentence?

I think this is a perfect example of the many things in a public budget that can be cut. Even if there were no problems with money, taxes should not be used for frivolous items such as this. Public officials often seem to forget that the money they are spending is money that the citizens could better spend themselves as they are the ones that earned it.

"PS Why do female stars practice self immolation at the peak of their success?"

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

It was in reference to your Hanna Montana question posed earlier. Which is a lot lighter fare than the lightning rod topics that get the most play on the blog. Different audience.

Cyrus is yet the next female star to damage herself with compromising pictures (or behavior)that run counter to her image which sells her product to parents. Kids don't have the money, parents do.

Paris Hilton
High School musical girl, Huggins?
Another Disney teen star that is approx 20 now. Name escapes me
Britany Speers

This is off the top of my head.

These strike me as unbelievable self destructs.

Moderator Jim to Anonymous: Okay, thanks for explaining.

As someone already mentioned, they can hop over to the Library if they want a magazine.

$4900 - frankly, who cares? The Mayor and city council are only paid a token sum for their time - an it's important that they keep up on issues. $4900 is peanuts.

I'd like to see an analysis of the Million$ spent on downtown parking - which is a direct subsidy from taxpayers to downtown merchants.

Why does a salesclerk at a makeup store get free parking 24/7 on Van Buren while there is a multiple year waiting list to pay $60/quarter (going up to ????) to park at the train station? There is an issue of fairness here - we all pay taxes, don't we?

Are we really fighting over this being in the budget? I believe they each receive $12,000 per year to be on the city council. Their meetings go until late in the night and they have hours upon hours of reading to do every week. Its a tedious and sometimes thankless job. So they get some free magazines to give them new ideas or to catch up on current events. I think we are looking for reasons to complain about something we take for granted. Maybe instead we should send them to the spa every week to relieve some stress. The majority of them are working a 40+ hours per week on their regular job and then they devote the majority of their free time to you and our city. I think that this is something we should keep in the budget if they want it, let them decide.

Moderator Jim to Ken C: The spa idea is interesting - might be worth looking into.

Most publications are now available on-line. I would imagine that they can "catch up on current events" this way. Expenses need to be cut where they can. I personally don't subscribe to anything except the Sunday paper -- I can't afford it.

All the subscriptions should be stopped, period.

Now, how about all those newspaper subscriptions that district 204 pays for with taxpayer money? Could that be why the SUN toes the line and regurgitates whatever the district says because it doesn't want to offend is biggest subscriber? Could it be why the SUN always endorses the union sponsored candidates? Could it be why the SUN never reports on those $10,000 checks the district writes to the Chamber (for which taxpayers get NOTHING) or a host of other matters on which the SUN never reports?

How about all those FOIA requests BC got from 204?
Never saw a single story. What is she doing stuffing pillows?

I've lived in Naperville for 13 years and the SUN is getting better but there is room for improvement.

>Their meetings go until late in the night and they have hours upon hours of reading to do every week

Oh please, stop the whining.

No one is making them do the job and there are plenty of people who would do a better job than most of these tax and spend types.

Where was the SUN article critical of the multi-million bailout of the carillon?

And now they are going to raise our taxes, again? Really?
Well, no shit sherlock because too much of it is wasted.

I care about the $4900 and so should everyone.
This is the type of disease and wasteful thinking that spreads like the plague. Oh, it's only a million here and a trillion there.

Wake up people.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OS2fI2p9iVs

ahhh but are they recycling the magazines after they're done?

LOL @ this entire topic

I feel like I live in Mayberry or something, with all this whining about some piddly little magazine/newspaper subscription cost.

Moderator Jim to Stinks: Good point...I wonder if Barney Fife had to pay for his own magazines.

Gee, I wonder how many people who have dismissed nearly $5,000 as being trivial would be willing to pay for this expense out of their own pocket if it is so insignificant.

My understanding is that we are already providing city council members with laptops and internet access. If they are using these tools effectively which have already been bought and paid for by the Naperville taxpayer there is little to no reason for additional hard copy subscriptions. Unless people are posing we have seen some posts on the Naperville Sun blogs that are alegedly from city council members so that tells us at least some of them know their way around a computer.

Now I'm willing to take a real big guess here and suggest that the city council isn't the only department in city hall that has a budget for newspapers and subscriptions. I'm not really sure I'm comfortable knowing my tax dollars are being spent paying salaries for a whole bunch of people sitting around during their workday reading newspapers. That is not how things are done in the corporate world and yes we need to know what is going on just as much as government workers. We subscribe and pay for our own subscriptions. We get up and read them before work while eating breakfast or possibly while riding the train downtown. Once we are in the office we are expected to produce work not sit around and read a newspaper. In fact I can't imagine a better way to get in your bosses cross hairs.

If we are paying nearly $5,000 per year in a department as small as the city council then what in the world must we be paying in something like the police department that has 300 employees? What in the heck must we be paying in total for subscription city wide in all of the departments? Gee, add it all up and we might be talking real money.

Thank goodness the city council showed some leadership and initiative on this issue to cut needless expense and waste. Now let's see what the department heads do to follow their excellent leadership. Will they step up and also cut needless fat out of their own budgets or will they duck and weave and try to maintain the status quo?

I can think of one council member who should have his magazine subscription canceled. His portion could be held in escrow for mounting legal fees.

You could balance your checkbook or do your business’ accounting and be off by a penny. Is this significant? No. But you search for the cause of why your books don’t balance because it could be the sign of a larger issue.

Likewise, the magazine subscriptions aren’t a large line-item in the city budget, but the council’s lack of self-restraint is a troubling sign for the city budget as a whole.

T.B.

The famous quote from Everett Dirksen do something like a billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money.

Is this really $4900 per council member, or $4900 for all of them? If it's $4900 for each one, how many subscriptions can they possibly read?

They also get a $5400 cell phone allowance. Wow. 4 phones in my family cost less than $1500 per year. I have a feeling there are a lot of small items that could become one large item.

Moderator Jim to Kevin: It's not $4,900 for each one - that's the total amount for the whole city council.

Am I the only one who wants to know what they subscribe to? lol

Can't anyone be concerned about something that is even a whole percent of the city budget?

Police OT is merely .8%. Magazine subscriptions are .001315% of the budget.

Oh, the scandal! Still, compromise.. get 1 subscription to things and keep them at city hall and they can share/trade them around with each other...or go use our nice library system. Then again, since its that small of a fractional percentage, who cares? :)

Dear Joe,

Trivializing wasteful spending and lack of oversight or accountability will not help restore trust in our city government, our city council, and the various city departments.

It takes budget creep for a budget to get out of control in most cases. It usually does not happen overnight or all at once. Line items increase. New line items appear. Department heads jockey for position and want the same thing in their budget as every other departments.

Managing a budget takes restraint. Managing a budget requires effective policies so everyone knows and understands the groundrules.

Everyone sits by and does nothing year after year allowing the line items to increase year after year and new line items continue to appear and inflate the total bottom line. Pretty soon we end up in a situation like DuPage County was in and we have a financial crisis.

Most corporations are really tough with their budget process and for a good reason. Being tough means they have good financial health. Good government is no different. The taxpayers are not an endless pot of gold to dip into regardless.

Right now we taxpayers are having some tough times. All over taxpayers are tightening their financial restraint. It is not unreasonable for taxpayers expect the same from all branches of government.

What I would expect from an effective city council is for them to send a message to all city department heads putting a freeze on all new line items.
I would also like to see the city council demand an across the board 10% cost reduction on all expense items, yes, including salaries.

Those of us who work in the corporate world are used to dealing with these realities of work life, especially those of us who manage people and money. You never find out where the fat is in an organization if you do not take a knife to it now and then.

If the city council doesn't know where to look or how to look I can understand that because they are just a bunch of volunteer citizens who were elected by their fellow citizens to serve. I would hope that they are at least smart enough to be able to challenge the draft budgets pushed forward by city staff and occasionally be smart enough to hire some really good outside consultants to help them identify wasteful spending and help them compare actual cost against what other similar cities are doing.

Most independent consultants who are given free access to the books will be able to identify opportunities to save money that far exceed the cost of the consulting contract (usually several multiples) and is money very well spent.

Anon,

If I hired a team of accountants to overlook a 380 million dollar budget for things to trim and they concentrated on anything under 1% I would fire them for costing me more money for their time spent than any potential 'savings' they think they can find.

Anyone can make a cell on a spreadsheet 'look' better. When it comes top putting that change into practice out in the real world is where those 'savings' usually end up costing you far more than if you did nothing about them in the first place.

Calling something a problem does not make it a problem. No one yet has proven that there is a problem. They certainly called it a problem, but no one has shown there to be a problem and how their 'solutions' solve anything in the real world.

Dear Joe,

It only takes 100 1% items to add up to 100%. An attitude like yours would not get you very far in my organization nor any others od which I am aware. Most likely a financial attitude like yours would only get you the sacked for not being an effective and responsible manager.

Most really good financial managers can tell you many examples of how they found lots of savings in places that they did not naturally think to look. It isn't the savings per line item that is important. It is the culmination of all the different line items that are important.

Reality is that there are an awful lot of line items that fall into the realm of nice to have or nice to do or discretionary. These are not critical items that would seriously affect the ability of city government to deliver what is absolutely necessary.

Take travel and food as just one example. Citizens are cutting back themselves on these discretionary expenses right now. So can city government. Yeah, maybe it would be nice if Joe in the Electric Department went to the annual convention this year, but times are tough and sorry, but the city council says he can't go. Discretionary travel is almost always one of the first items to be cut in any corporate budget when money gets tight.

It is simply irresponsible to justify ignoring an expense item because of its relative size. The overwhelming vast majority of taxpayers do not manage their personal finances that way nor do responsible businesses. Only when people manage the taxpayers money like it was money coming out of their own pocket will we see better financial management in city government.

Does anyone have a problem with the council spending more than $1,500 on Christmas and holiday cards?

Are we really arguing that it's not worth it to cut frivolous city spending like this because magazine subscriptions "only" amount to .001315% of the budget?! (That figure according to Joe earlier.) I see this kind of like the change jar on my dresser. Sure, a few pennies and a nickel every couple days doesn't seem like much, but by the time that jar is fill and you bring it to the bank you're usually sitting on a couple hundred bucks!

A few thousand dollars on magazine subscriptions might not seem like much, but look at it on a longer term. In the next five years the city will spend $25,000 on magazine subscriptions. $5,000 is easy enough to scoff at, but what happens when it turns in to $10,000, $15,000, $20,000, etc? At what point has the wasteful spending come to a total that is worth doing something about?

Even though my share of the $5,000 as a resident would only be a few cents, I'd rather those pennies were in my change jar than spent on magazines so the councilmen have something to read while they're on the can!

Anon,

An attitude like yours claiming they can save without actually showing that they can with a real plan is just talk and a waste of contract money better spent on employees who are efficient to begin with.

You talk the talk now walk the walk.

Eeewww,

You make a good point. The next time I'm sitting waiting in city hall I'll think about where that magazines has been before I pick it up and read it.

Penny Jar,

Think how much the Sun spends on IT costs to run this blog. They could save a bunch by simply shutting it down. Right? Just because something has a cost doesn't mean it can or should be eliminated. One has to look at what they get for that money. You get a place to blog, on someone else's dime. City Council people get information that they can take to the bathroom and make productive use of their time multitasking. Police keep our streets safer by being out there and being visible. Everything has a benefit.

If you feel there is no benefit then come before city council during the public session and speak about it.

Most of these periodicals could be cut. I think it would be a more interesting read to see what it is that each subscribes to. I bet that there would be quite a few that don't relate at all to their duties.

Joe- I would hope the Sun recuperates whatever money it spends hosting this blog with the several advertising and popups it has. Your point doesn't hold water, already over-taxed taxpayers don't pay for this blog with their tax dollars.

Moderator Jim to Penny Jar: Thanks, Penny Jar. I'd just like to say that we here at The Sun are happy to host this lively forum for community debate and comment.

Penny,

Sorry, but the point does hold water. There is a cost/benefit applied to everything in business and in government.

The sun sees this site as a benefit. The city sees police OT and magazine subscriptions as providing some benefit due to what they get back from it.

Joe,

If the Sun is playing their cards right, they're making money off banner clicks and page views. Web applications like this Movable Type blog are designed to be light weight and easily scale regardless of the amount of active users. Assuming the Sun has a half-way competent IT department, their online components should be making money. I'm not familiar with how SCAinteractive (The advertising network the Sun seems to be using.) pays out, but from personal experience, it's not hard to recuperate the costs of running an online community with Google's AdSense.

How does this compare with the Mayor having the newest issue of People magazine, again? What do the activities of Ashton Kutcher have to do with city government? If the members of city government truly require celebrity gossip to operate, people.com, tmz.com, wwtdd.com, and perezhilton.com are all easily viewable online for free. For real news, news.google.com is far more efficient than newspapers, not to mention free. You can even add local news, all you have to do is enter your zip code.

Or, like someone already posted, what is stopping them from going to the library if they truly require a print copy of Freshwater Sport Fishing Monthly?

Penny,

Obviously you see zero benefit from city counsel people having any form of print publication. They obviously see it differently. Print can be picked up and taken with you and read anywhere you have a few seconds. I've not seen Mayor Pradel walking around w/ a laptop strapped to his back and an eye-visor display screen. Have you?

Were you sitting with Mayor Pradel as he was salivating over an Ashton Kutcher article in People Magazine or were you just making this up?

Moderator Jim: Could you please find out from the finance people at the Sun whether this venture actually operates in the red or the black if you are able to. Thank you.

Joe,

What you simply seem to forget is it doesn't matter what the people at city hall want. They only get what WE give them... as in We The People... do you remember that part from school?

I'm sure they think anything they want to spend money on is perfectly ok and can probably come up with some sort of rationalization if pressed hard enough. The fact is the city only gets to spend money on why we the people think is acceptable. The city council is supposed to listen to their constituency and then act according to their wishes within the limits of a republic form of government. If they don't listen very well... and forums like this are excellent listening posts for them... then they loose staying in touch with the people and will likely suffer the consequences at the ballot box come next election.

You know what? I've honestly never ever met a neighbor, a friend, a relative, etc who was anywhere close to supporting unchecked free government spending like you. Who knows maybe I'm just hanging around the wrong kind of people or maybe you are a government worker who doesn't like the idea of having to be responsible and accountable with other peoples money.

Joe--

Nice try, but this is a waste of money. Most of these fine councilmen would subscribe to newspapers anyways and they could get caught up on other affairs through the internet. This is a waste and is indefensible.

T.B.

TB,

See post 5 on this blog...

The rest is just haggling over price and discretion.

Let our worthless government bureaucrats pay for their own magazines and newspapers. If they were doing anything productive for the city of Naperville, they wouldn’t have time to read while the taxpayer is paying for them to do something constructive.

By Anonymous on April 29, 2008 9:32 PM
Joe,

You know what? I've honestly never ever met a neighbor, a friend, a relative, etc who was anywhere close to supporting unchecked free government spending like you.

------------------------------------------------------------------

Anonymous,
I have also never met a neighbor, a friend, a relative, etc who was anywhere close to supporting unchecked free government spending like you. Joe is very unusual.

He has a friend that said the Napergate Man fled to Arizona and another friend that surveyed a good part of Naperville and found no one who ever heard of the Napergate Man!?!?

The Napergate Man was known for watching the city budget and making sure government spending was in check. So they pretend he is a fictitious ghost that never existed!

I do think folks like Joe work for the city or Frateranl Order of Police and pretend no one exists that wants to keep a check on government spending.

Joe and his friend Ken feel all city spending is justified. These guys want us to pay for Police OT on charity events when we can get off duty police to work for one third the price. To me this is an indication they work for the Frateranl Order of Police or City Hall.

I doubt Joe pays repairmen who come to his house time and a half or double time. I bet he has never paid anyone OT in his life. But he wants us to pay OT because as the Fratenal Head of Police he collects part of the UNION DUES for fighting for their right.

I think his real name is Joe Thatchett! I bet the police department has a bigger budget for magazines than City Hall.

All this waste as you say does add up.

Who cares about .08% for police OT. The bottom line is that translates to 3.15 million dollars and it would fill every Penny Jar with 7000 pennies or 70 bucks for every home in Naperville per year. That is a lot of money for Penny Jar and the rest of us. Any kid could use that money to buy books for school or pay for a visit to the dentist. We need to be more frual in this town and I thank Mr. Lynch for opening the airwaves on his blog site.

Anon,

I don't give entities a blank check. I also know when something is worth fighting and when something is over my head.

Anyone can do simple math on what is costs to hire more officers, train them, outfit them, provide healthcare and other benefits along with the administrative costs, etc and understand that the police OT cost versus that alternative costs might be pretty close to a break even. New employees do not come free and there are far more behind the scene costs than just salary alone.

Talking about 'Any kid could use that money to buy books for school or pay for a visit to the dentist' when you mention this silly $70 per household 'average' is kind of funny. It's your parent's money, not yours. Go get your parent's tax bill and post their city portion. Let's do some real math for a change instead of Enron-Marketing average-math which doesn't equate to what your parents actually paid or anyone else.

I keep asking but no one posts it. Doesn't anyone actually own their home or are they still living with their parents?

Joe,

You are now so confused you can't even post what you have to say on the correct thread. Maybe the moderator will show you some mercy and move this over to the Police OT thread were it belongs for you.

Now can we please get back to discussing city council subscriptions?

Anonymouse 3:56 pm:

At least Joe and I are willing to put a name behind our claims and ideas. You just cast aspersions as one of the many people who hide behind the anonymouse name.

If you had any reading comprehension, anonymouse, you would have noticed mine was the third post on this thread, and I am definitely against this program. I feel there are probably a lot more just like it that could add up to a good chunk of tax payer money that does not need to be spent.

By the way, anonymouse, I never claimed to have surveyed a good portion of Naperville, as you say. If you cannot debate without resorting to lies and hiding your identity, you obviously have nothing much to add to the debate.

Dearest Ken,

The Naperville Sun alone made the decision and choice to allow anonymous posts and to also offer the ability to register names.

Registering and using the name "Ken" is for all practical purposes no more or less anonymous than a post by "anonymous". Anyone who is anonymous is not hiding behind that name any more or any less than you are hiding behind the name "Ken".

The only practical value of a "name" is that it helps sort out who says what as opposed to sometimes trying to determine which "anonymous" posted which comment. In the bigger scheme of things names really don't matter and your attempt to discredit me or any other poster who chooses to comment this way doesn't add value to the actual conversation and only serves to spin it off on a non-relevant tangent. Please try to stay focused on the topic of this thread which is wasteful government spending.

Just my take on things, but then again please don't confuse me with "Anonymous@3:56PM" as I am actually "Anonymous@9:32PM" from the day prior!

To Anon,

You're right, it was off topic. Just like yours "By Anonymous on April 30, 2008 3:56 PM"

My bad.

Please post up what subscriptions we are paying for and denote which ones are fluff. That would be a good start to trimming them back, wouldn't it?

Thanks for proving my point, Anonymouse 9:32pm. You had to find a way to distinguish yourself from Anonymouse 3:56. What if you just posted under the same name all the time? As I implied, and you seem to agree with, people will not know who I really am either way. If you want to be lumped in with the Anonymouse that tells lies and takes shots at people, I guess it doesn't matter to you. If you want to be known and debated with for your own views, you pick a name and stick with it.

By the way, my original post was on topic. You are the one that spun away from the original topic with your post attacking me...anonymousely.

It's funny that you want the government to take responsibility for all spending great or small (as I do), yet don't even want to take minimal responsibility for your own statements.

Dearest Joe,

Yes, you were off topic and thank you for admitting it.

Now back to "Is City Council wasting $ on mag subscriptions?" You bet they are wasting $! On subscriptions and police OT and a whole host of other things. The city council needs to put together a commission of financial experts that can help them comb thru the budget and work to identify additional expenses that can be reduced or eliminated. The unchecked city budget growth trend needs to be slowed, halted, and reversed.

Let's take a look at the additional $10,000 dollars the city council gave the Exchange Club to make the 4th of July fireworks the best the city has ever seen.

Just a minute here, was the city council thinking before they acted or are they blind to what they have just done? Here is another example of where they let emotion run away from common sense when they took $10,000 from a culture fund to blow it on fireworks. I really am at a loss to find the connection between fireworks and culture.

What I simply do not understand and do not agree with is why the city council is making a donation to the entertainment expense of something that is a paid admission event? If the Exchange Club wants to put on the best fireworks Naperville has ever seen then the Exchange Club should budget for the expense, advertise what they are doing, and charge admission accordingly.

The Ribfest draws so many people from all over the metro area I actually wonder how many people attending are actually from Naperville? Most people in Naperville are at home and depending upon where they live they may or may not even be able to catch a glimpse of the aerial show. It just doesn't seem right to me that the city council would spend city tax dollars like this and try to justify it as the best Naperville has ever seen because most of Naperville is not going to benefit from it at all.

It think it is high time for the Naperville Sun to do some good investigative reporting and dig into where every dime in the SECA fund has been distributed since the city started collecting this tax. I'm starting to get the impression there may be a lot more inappropriate donations going on than any of us are aware.