Dear Editor:

Now that the City audit is complete and the Council members have played their silly political games with the numbers, here is the rest of the story. The City ended up 2013/2014 with a positive $5,537,579 plus another $8,841,680 in unrestricted service funds in the bank. There is a separate $2,276,781 for “catastrophic losses “, somewhat undefined, in addition to the 14% reserve.  Again, City management is playing the “hide the pea” game here with big bucks in the bank.

City management has finally transferred $2,810,221 of these dollars for street repairs that the Council approved nearly two years ago and management is just getting around to accounting for this appropriation. It should be noted that the City also has another $2,296,305 in restricted State Powell money that must be used for street repairs. That’s over $5,000,000 in the bank that the City can use now, just sitting there for street repairs, yet little has been done on streets.

In addition to these street funds the City has, after the street allocation mentioned above, $13,845,819 available for capital improvements, “catastrophic” events or to invest at one half of a percent in City investments. This is in addition to the 14% cushion that the Council has approved; $4,530,219 above the State mandated requirement.

So you see folks, City management, and some Council members, have been crying because the previous City Council did not allow the fabricated “revenue neutral”   tax increase requirement to occur. In addition, with an extra $13,000,000 in the bank and the $4,500,000 14% cushion, why the current Council implemented a 3.8 percent tax increase to our citizens is beyond belief. It shouldn’t take a PhD to understand that spending some of these funds for needed City capital improvements is much better than earning nearly nothing in a bank.

Terry Boardman

Greenville