Hyland-Meyer Budget Analysis of the City of Troy

After nearly a year without a post, Barry Hyland has published "A summary, a requiem, a new start, or maybe just the truth?" on the Truth In Troy blog.  I would encourage you to read his very lengthy post that deals with the City of Troy's budget situation over the past three years. I've been off Council for almost 5 years, so I don't have the inside knowledge to judge whether their numbers are more reliable than those offered by City management. 

Hopefully the next Troy City Manager will read the budgetary information provided by City residents Barry Hyland and Clinton Meyer.

Because Meyer and Hyland have made some serious allegations about former City Manager John Szerlag and some current and former Councilmembers, I would hope that one or more of them would offer a response.

Aside from the budget analysis, Hyland offers an observation on the state of Troy politics ...

There is one last point I would like to make. In a certain sense, the entire municipal fiasco of the past several years was about a library's place – any library's place – in a community. Troy voters and Council members who were aligned with TCU were ultimately willing to let the library disappear in order to demonstrate that any government expenditures that aren't about property protection (police, fire, and courts) are "socialist" in nature and need to be restrained or eliminated. On the other side, voters and Council members who were aligned with Mr. Szerlag and TRUST were ultimately willing to use the library as a pawn in an unsavory power-play to prove that TCU's ultra-conservative stance on taxation was grossly misguided. [They may have also wanted to prove that they could successfully force a tax increase if they wanted it bad enough.] By my reckoning, both sides made a few good points and a bunch of bad ones. Both sides certainly made dishonest and/or incomplete arguments on a more-or-less continuous basis for two straight years (and counting). And both sides should feel pretty bad about this. It was, after all, the library we were talking about. And not just any library, but the award-winning Troy Public Library. And we almost lost it because of political gamesmanship. The library is our community's intellectual center, and its "public square", and I daresay it is the city's emotional heart as well. It would be fairly easy to make a case that a public library is the first thing that should be created with any community's public funds, and the last thing that should be touched when public funds become scarce. Many intelligent, sensible people through the years have said that they would rather have a library and no other functioning part of government than a "perfect" government and no library.