Without knowing the figures

Several important numbers were not included for the proposed Hernando County budget Thursday night which should have been a critical factor. These numbers include the total budget in dollars for 2008 ; the total general fund dollars for 2008; and what the percent of increase or decrease this 2008 budget is over the previous year. I am really surprised that none of the county commissioners requested this information at their budget hearing on Thursday. The one commissioner that should have been scrutinizing these figures is David Russell. Mr. Russell ran his campaign on the premise of implementing a zero based budget for Hernando County. How can a zero based budget be analyzed without previous figures to compare them with in this year's budget? For that matter, how could any of the commissioners justify approving any budget numbers without knowing these figures?

The percent of increase or decrease for the Hernando County budget would have given the county commissioners a good rule of thumb to determine whether enough, or too much, was trimmed from this year's budget before they indiscriminately voted to reduce the Ad Valorem an additional amount of 1.2175 mills. The question is, was this reduction enough , or was there really more wiggle room in this budget? A budget history comparing the total general fund dollars with the total budget dollars for the past five years would have given the county Commissioners the tools required to make educated decisions but none of them asked for these details in the the budget hearing and the question is why? The public will just have to wait until the required public announcements are published in a local newspaper to indicate the total budget in dollars, with the percent of increase, or decrease, to understand if the county commissioners made the right decisions on Thursday night...