Comments for LCG to tighten belt at http://www.theind.com , comment 1 to 8 out of 8 comments http://www.theind.com Sun, 19 May 2013 03:37:08 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.theind.com/news/indreporter/10471-lcg-to-tighten-belt#comment-26660 I have a novel idea! Let's appraise vacant land for the true value in Lafayette Parish. What say you Jo-Do & Comrade Conrad? - Michael A. Moss Thu, 10 May 2012 19:42:52 +0100 http://www.theind.com/news/indreporter/10471-lcg-to-tighten-belt#comment-26654 Joey was not railroaded into running for Mayor first time out by the GTGG ( Goons To Gain Gang ) but because of the puppeteers familiarity with joeys persona, it was known that joey had all his flying colors in Obedience School, a certainity that joey had a perfect record of geeing and hawing, without much prodding, fittingly like an inbred second nature. - chano leal Thu, 10 May 2012 00:30:28 +0100 http://www.theind.com/news/indreporter/10471-lcg-to-tighten-belt#comment-26651 Joey had maxed out selling birdseed to the " tweakers ? - chano leal Wed, 09 May 2012 22:05:20 +0100 http://www.theind.com/news/indreporter/10471-lcg-to-tighten-belt#comment-26649 They are going to stop at nothing to get a tax increase. And ya'll all thought Joey was this great business man. My God folks, he inherited a pet store! Come-on!!!!!!!!!!!! - Michael A. Moss Wed, 09 May 2012 19:53:02 +0100 http://www.theind.com/news/indreporter/10471-lcg-to-tighten-belt#comment-26639 Back to the same problem of the parish draining the city of $$$. - Joe LeBlanc Wed, 09 May 2012 11:26:06 +0100 http://www.theind.com/news/indreporter/10471-lcg-to-tighten-belt#comment-26630 Is it the Parish, the State or The city of Lafayette that dumped $ 20,000.00 of good money on a bro-n-law nursey invoice to beautify the south and north curb sites of Surrey Street Ext. by the Airport and the Hunkinberry Park ? Pray tell ? - chano leal Tue, 08 May 2012 22:44:04 +0100 http://www.theind.com/news/indreporter/10471-lcg-to-tighten-belt#comment-26626 Also worth noting that LCG in February provided this update on the first quarter of the financial year comparing retail sales tax collections in Lafayette the city and the non-incorporated areas. http://www.lafayettela.gov/PDF/Finance/Sales_Tax_Collections.pdf City collections are around 5-10% higher per month year to year. Parish collections though far less are growing as well. LEDA's website overviews the year to year total retail expenditures parishwide from all jurisdictions from 1990-2011 (which have various levels of tax exposure, but notably that the cities do not exempt food purchases from sales tax, though utilities if included here, are exempt, and that car sales last I knew are taxed based on home address of resident): http://www.lafayette.org/site59.php The trend line is clearly upward, even with the Katrina/Rita bump from '05 to '07. Perhaps the problems stem from something systemic at the state wide level, especially if state government is asking localities to take on funding more of public retirement systems, shifting the burden to hide the structural flaws of the state and its revenue issues. Worth more investigation. One salient point in the Advertiser story is the cost of new fire stations and staffing. Its one thing to finance a steady-state economy. Growth economies/communities can be a little more challenging to finance if the revenues aren't in line with the increased costs of infrastructure demands in the short term. Eventually those would level out in the long haul. Are we in the short-haul right now? - Jason Faulk Tue, 08 May 2012 18:42:19 +0100 http://www.theind.com/news/indreporter/10471-lcg-to-tighten-belt#comment-26625 One percent of the total budget of LCG, but can we fairly assume that general government budget shortfalls can impact the budget of LUS and LUS Fiber, the former of which contributes significant ILOT to city share of general government annually? My main point is that at a passing glance, Lafayette operates on a shoestring annually and if we are this sensitive to consumption patterns, then maybe a more diversified revenue source is necessary for government operations. This imbalance is to the tune of 5% of general government budgeting. If the shortfalls are more heavily due to retirment costs, then this sounds like a structural problem which won't be going away anytime soon and will require a structural change. Last I saw, consumption is up to $4 Billion per year in retail purchases within the LCG domain. We should not be having these problems, yet we are. At least we're more prudent than the federal government which created public retirement insurance and then restructured its finances for long term durability and then began borrowing from that resource for decades to finance public spending on the backs of low and middle income working people, while depressing the progressive tax rates on the true wealth accumulators in society, until the structural imbalance comes back into focus in our past few years, leaving a larger but not insurmountable hole to hike up out of. Fix this Lafayette and let's get back on to the visioning for the future. Don't be afraid to engage in public spending if it benefits us all in common and lessens private costs or enables more efficient common spending/investment patterns or increases viable levels of service that help us to get on with more sustainable building and consumption patterns and local economic investment. - Jason Faulk Tue, 08 May 2012 17:39:20 +0100