Ann vs. Angela

Da Mayor charged Dallas City Council member Jerry Allen of Lake Highlands with finding ways to trim the Dallas City Council's budget. One of his ideas was to cut the number of city secretaries in half and letting each councilmember share one. District 14 council member Angela Hunt didn't cotton to that idea one bit: "... with the significant cuts in many city services, the council is going to see an increase in constituent phone calls and service requests, and the proposal to eliminate half the secretaries will, in my opinion, reduce our ability to respond to residents," Ms. Hunt wrote recently.

Freshman District 13 council member Ann Margolin sees it differently, however. "I have agreed to share a secretary and cut my office and travel budget by 25%," she writes.

I'm going to have to side with the freshman on this one. True, council members, in Ms. Hunt's words will "see an increase in constituent phone calls and service requests," but those can be handled by the council assistants, not the secretaries.

One thing they do agree on is cutting all that paper wasted on printing council agenda materials. Ms. Margolin writes: "I am also advocating reducing our annual council bill for printing agendas which costs about $140,000 ...:" and Ms. Hunt's list of suggest council budget cuts contained this item: "Eliminate photocopying agenda materials (use online agenda). Savings: $148,000." These materials were hand-delivered to council members at their homes on Friday evenings and going to an on-line agenda would also mean eliminating that delivery service, which Ms. Hunt noted, would save another $6,024.