Birmingham is slashing and burning left and right and BJCTA along with other things are affected

Today during the usual Monday City Council Budget committee meetings, the Birmingham City Council has to figure out a way to remove $8 million of expenditures from the operating budget.  Some of the things mentioned to save funds includes 10 day furloughs for city employees, charges for garbage disposal, and not fully funding the Birmingham-Jefferson County Transit Authority (BJCTA) the $9 million in payments.  This comes at a very bad time for the BJCTA which just settled for $30,000, one-fourth of the original $120,000 it charged Hoover for its U.S. 31 bus route that was saved by the negotiations.  The BJCTA is in literal dire straits, not figuratively at all, with buses leaking during rainfall, regular breakdowns, and disruptions of service due to these breakdowns.  Ironically, the funding for the BJCC multipurpose facility expansion wouldn't be affected since the city funds it after receiving invoices of progress and it comes from the "Birmingham Fund" capital budget that is separate from general budget fund.

Back to the Birmingham City Council budget debacle, interim mayor Roderick Royal was the one who proposed the reduction of expenditures.  Royal discusses plans to not pay the city employees for the New Year's Eve, Martin Luther King holiday, Good Friday and Memorial Day holidays to save $3.7 million.  However, many criticize this move along with the fact that just 3 weeks ago Royal said that the figures saying that the city unbudgeted itself by $20.89 million under Langford was an inaccuracy and it was only $1 million.  Now the tune is quite different and saying that he want wants to reduce $8 million from the budget any way possible since the FY 2010 revenue won't be enough to cover the $423 million expenditures budgeted.

Geez, my head is spinning and I can only image how anybody else feels about this.  The idiots that voted for Langford are to thank for the abyss of nuttiness where Smitherman and others knew what was going with Langford, but didn't do a damn thing until it was too late.  I'm so tired of this lot of morons it doesn't make any type of sense.