April 25

Today I went to the East Valley Working Group meeting.  This was a knock out, drag out fight... Over the past 10 months Phoenix has been working with other valley cities to determine what can be done to balance the budget.  Most cities recieve fund from Prop 400 that is used only for transit.  The problem is that the economy is falling and in turn the funding is shrinking.  All of the cities have to find a way to balance the budget but they all want to provide as much service as possible within their jursidiction.  It is interesting to see how much thought goes into these decisions and how a slight move to one peice of the puzzle and throw everything off.  It is not as simple as one would think, but the cities know that these decision have to be made quickly in order to modify the operating contracts.  Hopefully I will have a list of the proposed changes tomorrow and I will post what the information is at that time.  Please note that changes can still be made to this list up until council approves the changes.