Write Your Alderman about the budget

I sent this to some of my friends in the 33rd but wanted to share more widely. Wednesday's vote is very important and everyone should make their voice heard.  

If you live in the 33rd, you can send your email to deb@33rdward.org with a cc to info@33rdward.org, if you live somewhere else, you can find that info here.
---------------------------
Hi all - 

I hope you are enjoying the fall weather.  I am writing to encourage everyone to write Mell before the budget vote on Wednesday.

If you think she should vote "no" - the email I sent to Mell is below - feel free to use as much or as little as you want. If you could let me know if you did, that would be great, but not required.

If you think she should vote "yes" - you will have to write your own email, but really, you owe it to yourself to do this, even if the email is as short as "please vote yes on the budget."

Don't get me wrong - we will have to have a tax increase. I said it time and again throughout the election, but this "solution" places the burden squarely on us.  The city needs to do more to clean up their own house - and explore more creative avenues for revenue generation than they have done this far.

Thanks for listening and for those of you that don't know, the email is deb@33rdward.org with a cc to info@33rdward.org

Sincerely,
Annisa Wanat

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Annisa Wanat 
Date: Tue, Oct 27, 2015 at 12:16 AM
Subject: Vote "no" on the Budget Wednesday
To: deb@33rdward.org, info@33rdward.org

Ald. Mell:

With the vote on the budget coming this week, I am writing to tell you that I want to you to live up to your promise not so support a tax increase and vote “no” on this budget.  The proposed budget is irresponsible and does not prioritize the needs of our neighborhoods.  In addition, it does little to address inefficiencies in our city operations while instituting the largest tax increase in history.  

Although I understand that years of mismanagement of finances in Springfield and Chicago have brought us to the point where a property tax increase is inevitable, we cannot place the burden of fixing this problem on the backs of property owners without exploring all options - or at least starting the process of doing so.  

Here are just a few recommendations of what needs to be explored before we agree to a property increase:

• Performance audits. The Inspector General has recommended several cost saving solutions to problems in our city’s processes.  Few of these have been explored or implemented.  We have already paid his office to make these recommendations, we should start listening.  I want to stress performance audits again, since when this came up during the election, some of your colleagues got financial and performance audits confused.
• Review city contracting procedures. It is highly suspicious that the man in charge of saying who does and does not get to stay on the ballot also rakes in millions in city contracts awarded by those same people.  This is a conflict of interest and should be stopped. Contracts should be reviewed to ensure there are not more of these cases.
• Cut the size of the city council in half.  We have twice as many alderman per person than NYC and four times more than LA.  The argument that city services will suffer doesnt hold water because noone in these cities walks around saying, "you know, we need more politicians." If we need to look to NYC and LA to find out how to provide better services so be it. Also, we should introduce Instant Run-off voting to save even more money when we elect the reduced number of alderman.
• Alternative Revenue Sources.  There are a ton of ideas floating around. Financial transaction tax. Congestion tax. A tax on luxury items and/or services. The Progressive Reform Caucus put together a laundry list - and although every one doesn’t have to be adopted - we should implement a couple to ease the burden on property owners.  

I have heard several alderman make recommendations for ways to either save money or increase revenue during this budget cycle.  Your constituents have not heard anything from you. Since you skipped almost half of the budget hearings, you also owe it to us to tell us how you tried to influence this budget to reduce our tax burden. 

Vote "no" on Wedneday.

Sincerely,
Annisa