Balloons

Last month New Orleans Chief Financial Officer Norman White's presentation on the fiscal impact of the city's traffic cameras left City Councilmembers frustrated.

"You should always be prepared to give a comprehensive update before this or any other committee. That's what I expect," he said.

In an interview, Brossett said he was disappointed with city Chief Financial Officer Norman White's lack of preparation and his failure to give the committee any idea of what the budget impact would be if changes were made to the traffic camera program.

Gilbert Montano is suppose to talk to them tomorrow, presumably with more information.  Although this looks like he might actually give them too much. 

The administration is looking at ways to make up for revenue that would be lost if the city scales back on its traffic camera program. But the effort also serves as the beginning of a larger conversation about the menu of options available in future years, Chief Administrative Officer Gilbert Montaño said Wednesday.

“We want to float up all the balloons that we can,” he said.

Montaño will be presenting various options to the City Council's Budget Committee on Thursday, as part of a presentation on ways the traffic camera program could be cut back or phased out. Council members expressed frustration a month ago over a lack of details about the administration's plans.

So many balloons.  Pick whichever you like. In other words, they really don't have a plan yet. 

That's actually not the worst possible news.  It means a lot of things are still possible, including the elimination of all the traffic cameras which would be in keeping with the opening promise of Cantrell's campaign last year.  Here, also, is another bit of good news.

City departments have requested about $68 million in new spending for the coming year, though Montaño said that figure represents the “fully loaded BMW” of budgets, with every department's wish list included. Exactly how much of that will end up in the budget is still to be determined.

What that means is that $19-$37 million budget shortfall we started hearing about last week may not actually exist. It all depends on how loaded we want the BMW to be.  Montano also says it won't be loaded with sales tax and fee hikes this year.  But he is going to bring that balloon along too just in case.

The biggest potential source of new revenue would be increasing the city’s sales tax by half a percentage point, which would take advantage of the maximum sales tax rate for the city authorized by the Legislature in the 1980s. The city now charges a half of a cent less, Montaño said.

That's not very pleasant to think about.  But we do have another year to let the air out of it.