Increased Debt may be 16M - Picard proposes tax hikes or more bonds

In the ever growing category of "You've Got to be Kidding me!", in today's New Haven Register article entitled "W. Haven considers 3 options on deficit", Mayor Picard says that he can only think of 3 potential solutions for the city to address the budget deficit:

1. Raise the tax rate again in 2007-2008.
2. Impose a mid-year tax-rate increase.
3. Issue deficit bonds
   

Sorry - these aren't acceptable... how about "Lower spending"? There is a lot of fat in the budget STILL.

Or maybe even more important, how about: "Include ALL of the incoming funds in the budget"? While Mayor Picard is quite happy to spread tales of doom and gloom about how we owe more money than we think we do, but he hasn't been explaining about how some monies have been 'found' that start to make up some of the multi-million dollar gap, which he says might be as high as $16 M.

For instance, what about the following articles I've previously blogged about:

• Unsolicited State Reimbursements for School Projects (worth $1.3-3.2 M)
  
• FEMA Funds from State (worth about $80,000)
• Revise extremely conservative estimates of revenues from state and grant monies to reasonable figures. (Who knows how much this is worth?)
  

Also, while you can't count your chickens before they hatch, why isn't he trying like crazy to get UI to move to town and bring in an additional $4M in tax dollars? Or what about talking to Governor Jodi Rell about assistance, citing the nearly $1 BILLION dollar state surplus?

More about this New Haven Register article shortly...