You may wonder why I’m looking elsewhere for news when the City of Greensboro presented its budget this week. That’s because it’s the same old song:
The big surprise in the proposed 2010-2011 city budget – presented by Greensboro City Manager Rashad Young at a special City Council meeting in the council chambers on Tuesday, May 25 – was that there were no surprises.
It is a tired old budget that could have easily been presented by former City Managers Mitch Johnson, Ed Kitchen or the late Bill Carstarphen. Greensboro went out and hired a young new manager, and although he has made some impressive changes, his budget reads like it comes from the notes for the course City Manager 101.
A couple million here, a couple million there, all to hold to the line on a budget that’s a 0.3 percent reduction from the current budget. I admit that Rashad Young is a welcome change from Mitch Johnson, and he handles himself well during council meetings. But somehow I’m not surprised that he “doesn’t appear to have brought any new budget ideas with him from Dayton.” There’s no better example of groupthink than municipal government.
