The Road to 2012
Special Report by Chris Graham
freepress2@ntelos.net
Waynesboro didn’t go poof! into the night. There aren’t tumbleweeds running through downtown. (Not yet.) The sun did in fact come up this morning. That’s in spite of another electoral defeat for progressives at the polls in the City Council elections on May 4.
Lorie Smith fell short in her bid to win re-election in Ward D, getting outpolled by 141 votes by former State Police lieutenant Mike Harris, an ally of the libertarian-conservative blog that already had a majority on the five-member city governing body. The bloc made it a clean sweep with Jeff Freeman’s win in the Ward C race over Virginia Department of Transporation engineering assistant Robert Johnson.
So why am I feeling almost optimistic about the cause of Moving Waynesboro Forward in the face of the election carnage? Read more
Mixed bag in local election results
Story by Chris Graham
freepress2@ntelos.net
Tighter-than-expected elections in Waynesboro, and results as expected in Staunton. That was Election Day in the Valley on Tuesday. Read more
It’s endorsement time
Written by Chris Graham
freepress2@ntelos.net
Waynesboro is going to head in a new direction after Tuesday’s city elections. Staunton is going to continue on a familiar and proven course. We can say that with certainty as different as the two election cycles have been in the sister cities.
Free read from AFPTheMagazine.com.
Read more
Election Guide 2010
Compiled by Chris Graham
freepress2@ntelos.net
AFPTheMagazine.com offers up information on the candidates for public office in contested races in Staunton and Waynesboro to be decided on May 4.
Free public service of AFPTheMagazine.com. Read more
The better budget approach: Zero-based, or results-based?
Story by Chris Graham
freepress2@ntelos.net
Mike Harris has tried to seize the momentum in the marquee race in the upcoming May 4 local elections with a proposal that revolutionized government budgeting 40 years ago.
It’s called the zero-based budget, and the idea is that budget writers start their work on fiscal plans with the assumption that they don’t have a single dollar to spend that is guaranteed, and that they’ll have to justify every penny they ask for as they seek ways to continue providing public-sector services like police, fire, rescue, trash pickup and others.
Free read from AFPTheMagazine.com. Read more
Harris, Freeman: It’s their election to lose
Column by Chris Graham
freepress2@ntelos.net
All I wanted to be able to do, I told myself throughout my 2008 campaign for Waynesboro City Council, was to think at 7 p.m. on Election Night that I’d done everything I could do to put myself in a position to be able to win.
Win or lose, I said to myself, many times, I didn’t want to leave anything on the table.
I lost, of course, and pretty miserably at that, and the postmortems aren’t yet over, almost two years later. It’s rare that I go more than a day or two without thinking about something that I could have done better or just differently.
It’s probably my personality. I haven’t coached youth basketball in eight years, and I still find myself on long drives scheming offensive systems, for that inevitable day when I get back into coaching. Read more
Phil Winter: Zero-based budgeting debate
Posted by afp on April 26, 2010 · Leave a Comment
Submit letters, guest columns: freepress2@ntelos.net
The News Virginian’s April 24 article about “zero-based” budgeting brought back memories of the federal government’s use of this approach more than 15 years ago. It proved then to be a quickly passing, inefficient, and ineffective, fad. Current City Council member, and candidate for reelection, Lorie Smith has it right; the budget preparation process should focus on efficiently utilizing taxpayers dollars, not on starting over every year from a “zero base.” Read more
Filed under Blogs · Tagged with lorie smith, lorie smith waynesboro, mike harris, mike harris waynesboro, news virginian, phil winter, waynesboro, waynesboro city council, waynesboro virginia, zero based budgeting