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Dear Editor:
Join my "A People's Budget for Dutchess County" on Facebook, email all 25 of us
at countylegislators@dutchessny.gov on these below, and speak up Tuesday,
November 28th at 7 pm in our County Legislature's chambers on the sixth floor
of our County Office Building at 22 Market Street in Poughkeepsie-- to restore
online budget survey to county website (as in 2012 and 2013), initiate a
participatory budgeting process to get more input from Dutchess residents from across
county to determine what to do with current massive fund balance/budget surplus,
and include these common-sense initiatives in County Budget for 2018:
[fact: current county fund balance (budget surplus) is now $59.6 million--
triple what it was from 1996 through 2012-- that money taken from towns/cities in sales tax revenue]
-- expand county Domestic Abuse Response Team to protect women in Rhinebeck/Clinton
-- restoration of sales tax revenue to municipalities starved into austerity
-- restoration of 5-day week to county Office for the Aging senior friendship centers
-- restoration of county Office of Consumer Affairs
-- full funding of Agency Partnership Grant requests for local nonprofits
-- new Legacy Business Program to protect long-standing independently owned businesses and make sure they survive/thrive (as in Seattle and San Francisco)
-- new Buy-Your-Business program to help small retail shops (as in Salt Lake City)
-- new Investment Cooperative to make it easier for local residents to help businesses here survive and thrive— funnel investment funds locally (as in Minneapolis)
-- new Worker Ownership Center as in Rochester and Cleveland to help facilitate creation of worker-owned cooperatives
-- new public bank (as in North Dakota, Oakland, Santa Fe, Philadelphia) to cut interest rates for businesses, municipalities, homeowners, and students
-- end corporate welfare-- $40 million paid annually by county taxpayers in Dutchess to subsidize government benefits that employees of poverty wages need to live
-- end $5 million yearly in overtime at county jail— make sure only those posing threat to public safety jailed (50 county jail inmates charged only with drug possession); Dutchess also needs smart bail reform like Washington, D.C, Chicago, New Jersey
Yours,
Joel Tyner
County Legislator
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