Posted on 05/05/2010 2:38:21 PM PDT by blam
Oakland Is About To Go Bust
Mike "Mish" Shedlock
May. 5, 2010, 1:56 PM
The party is over for Oakland even whether its city council is willing to admit it or not. As always, union contracts and pension benefits drove the city into the ground. Please consider Oakland faces pension costs, higher taxes.
Oakland voters will likely be asked in November to approve higher taxes to halve a $42 million deficit, but even if they agree, the city will face an even deeper crisis within months.
Ballooning pension costs will push the city's projected deficit to $58.7 million by July 2011.
The biggest portion of that budget shortfall is a debt payment of $43.9 million due July 1, 2011, to the old Police and Fire Retirement System. The payment would be more than 10 percent of the roughly $400 million city budget.
The looming crisis prompted great concern at last week's meeting from two council members, Pat Kernighan and Ignacio De La Fuente. When the council refused to ask staff to prepare a report on the impending budget woes, the typically mild-mannered Kernighan did not restrain herself.
"If that doesn't happen, you guys are crazy and irresponsible!" she exclaimed.
The costs of benefits to retirees appears to be the single biggest issue facing Oakland. Not only are the costs growing, but the city has not been funding them adequately, some council members said.
[snip]
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Let them fail.
Greece West???
Greece today......California tomorrow.
Santa Barbara soon....
Let them all fail. California too. They might learn if they fail and have to pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and start putting the pieces back together again. Don't get in the way of their failure.
hahaha!
fat chance buddy boy!
The more desperate they get, the more likely obama will step in.
Too liberal to fail.
OUTRAGEOUS!
Don’t buy anything where. Wasn’t Cali suppose to go broke last year? What’s up with that?
I have full confidence that Ron Dellums will turn things around.
End sarcasm.
Who was the former Mayor of Oakland? and who is running to be Governor again? Yes boys and girls Jerry (Moonbeam) Brown
Burn baby burn!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm not convinced that'll happen. Most people there get their free HAND-OUTS from the Federal Government.
“Wasn’t Cali suppose to go broke last year? What’s up with that?”
Several Tens of Billions of your Tax Dollars as “Obama Money!” delayed the inevitable for a year.
A large part of the problem is that they've been crying wolf year after year when things really weren't as near collapse as they were saying. It's been their standard pitch for years now and they've gone deeper and deeper into debt and increased obligations without regard for how they would pay for them when the bill comes due.
One of these days it's going to be for real, and it's not going to be a pretty sight.
At what point does the city declare bankruptcy?
There is no relief in site, only more problems.
Are they hoping for a ginormous bail-out from Uncle Obama?
One can only hope, but if they act like the idiot Greeks, they will be burning bankers alive, instead of admitting that socialism has been a failure.
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