Get Ready for the Budget

By October 15th, Kingston Mayor Sottile will officially transmit his 2010-11 municipal budget proposal to the Common Council.  This is only a proposal.  The Council will then spend nearly two months deliberating on his proposal before we approve what will certainly be a modification of what he presented to us.  We then will have a budget for the Mayor to approval or veto.  If he vetoes, the Council will have about ten days to override his veto – or not.

That’s the budget process in a nutshell.  There will be many, many meetings conducted by the Council’s Finance Committee,  chaired by Third Ward Alderman Charles Landi.  All of these meetings will be posted on the calendar and open to the public.  I haven’t seen the mayor’s number’s  yet, but I think it’s safe to say this will be a very ugly budget.  As always, I encourage the public to attend.  Stay tuned.

Bullets Over (420) Broadway

The City of Kingston has had its share of gun violence. And to be sure, the problem has not even come close to what people are experiencing in Newburgh and other similarly-sized cities. And it is a problem that the KPD has handled very effectively in my opinion.

The department is run by the very able Chief Keller, who answers to the city’s police commission. The person who presides over this commission is none other than the City Mayor.

This is why I was aghast at his comments in the Daily Freeman today in this ongoing and nonsensical debate over his desire to spend public dollars on a second gazebo for Gallo Park. Opining incorrectly that aldermen who oppose the gazebo have unfairly criticized the proposal, comparing the criticisms to “bullets” being fired at him, he was quoted: “‘They ought to be careful because those bullets may ricochet and…you just might get hit.'”

Huh? Are you serious, Mayor? We might get hit with bullets? That’s hardly the kind of thing any clearly thinking public official should EVER say, let alone the mayor of a city who also happens to run the police department!

This mayor tends to say things before he thinks, but even for him, this was at best outrageous and at worst, a little scary.