With the beginning of the New Year, there are several things on my mind. One is the serious budget crisis our State is in. I took a few minutes last week to look at the Governor?s proposals to rob local city government, agencies and school districts of funds they have depended upon and carefully saved over the years. Basically, if you have been careful to set funds aside and to be prudent in your dealings, the Governor now wants to punish those entities by taking this money back to the general fund. The biggest travesty is taking the funds set aside in the various community development agencies throughout the states. However, the cities and agencies who have not been as responsible and so do not have these funds, of course, will not have that money taken.
I know it is ?water under the bridge?, but I am angry with both the Governor and the State Legislature who ignored the warning signs of a cyclical economy and chose to continue to spend and authorize programs for the last 2 years with an eye to re-election instead of planning for a rainy day. And, I am most upset over the citizens that continue to return these same people to office (Republicans or Democrats) year after year without really knowing what types of programs and policies their legislators have voted for. However, Foster City will weather this storm as we are one of the lucky few that have carefully allocated our money over the years. While we may lose some funds to the Governor?s proposal (but not without a fight), we will still have sufficient funds to run the City.
With the economy being a tight as it is, I would encourage each of you to give whatever time or money you can afford to local charities and community organizations. I have carefully set out additional time to spend in volunteer hours for groups which are near and dear to my heart and which I know will also suffer this year from a downturn in donations. I would encourage each of you to identify one such group this year and make a commitment to help that group through the coming year.
If you have not already seen our new City Hall, it is great. There will be an open house for the public to tour the building on Saturday, March 29 from 1-4 p.m. Hope to see you there. Deborah Wilder can be reached at dwilder@fostercity.org.
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