About: John B. Kalb
- kalb@fortwaynepolitics.com
- Profile
- Born in Minnesota in 1935. Grew up in Lakewood, Ohio, western suburb of Cleveland. Family moved to Fort Wayne in 1949 as I started in high school. Grad of North Side, 1953, the General Electric Apprentice School as a toolmaker, BSEE from Purdue in 1961. Have lived in Fort Wayne since 1949 except years at West Lafayette at Purdue and two years in upper New York state with G.E. on engineering training program. Went into sales engineering in 1968 and sold for the R.L.Guimont Co., Inc.(machine tool components and inspection equipment) for 39 years, retiring in July of 2007. Active in my parrish, Emmanuel Lutheran on Jefferson Blvd., have sung in church choirs for over 65 years (tenor). Married Judith Holloway in 1969 - we have four children, Mike, Carrie, Mary, and Katrina; eight grandkids; our cat, Venus (who really believes she owns the place) and three grand-dogs. Big Purdue Baseball, Football and Basketball fan; hope to live to see Purdue men win a final four (maybe 2009!!!) Active in Engineering Societies - Fort Wayne Engineer's Club, American Society for Quality and Society of Manufacturing Engineers. Member of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers Educational Foundation International Scholarship Committee; the Northeast Indiana Engineer's Week Committee; Indiana Future City Competition Steering Committee.
Posts by John B. Kalb:
Reducing City Costs
2/18/08 @ 3:26 pm
Per our city administration,”We can’t cut costs except by laying off policemen and/or firemen”. This is a political cop-out - to scare citizens into believing it.
How about reducing some of the less-important city jobs? Like:
1) Do we really need a Deputy Mayor and his office staff?
2) Do we really need 57 people in our Community Development Office? $2,750,678 in salary and benefits and how many $100’s of million did this one office drop on our city in future property tax obligations in the last year! Just the property taxes from Jefferson Pointe in 2008 that were diverted via TIF nonsense could have added $ 1,800,000 plus the $6,000,000 that was in this TIF before $4, 000,000 of it was spent to illegally buy properties in the Harrison Square area, or a total of $7,800,000 to city income - but no, “we are not going to let those funds be used for anything as mundane as funding our city operating costs !!”
So that “pitttance” of diverted property taxes from Jefferson Pointe could have funded the entire shortfall that our mayor and our controller are predicting will result from the state actions and the council’s previously passed budget “hold”! “But no, we will just threaten our citizens with a reduction in public safety personnel - that will shut them up!”
3) Do we need 44 people in Transportation Administration and Transportation Engineering? Dave Ross is filling both the City Engineering and the Transportation Engineering head posts at present - can’t some of these jobs be combined?
4) Savings should result in the planned merger of City Land Use Management and Zoning Department with Allen County Planning Services when and if this ever happens.
Looking at just Wages and Benefits, per the approved 2008 city budget, the total is $110,969,668. Of this $81,159,259 is for Public Safety, leaving $29,810,668 in the rest. If cuts are necessary, how about cutting both categories by the same percentage - if cut required is $4,500,000, then take $1,208,851 from “other” and the $3,291,149 from Public Safety.
Filed Under City Council | 3 Comments
Senseless Economic Stimulus Program
2/18/08 @ 9:01 am
One reason we are in economic difficulties at the present time is because of the high price of oil. We still import lots of oil from Saudi Arabia.
Our elected congress and our president have this bright idea to give income tax refunds (plus some “welfare give-aways” to non-income tax payers, like myself in my retirement years). And this to “jump-start” our economy. Only problem is, to do this our country needs to sell lots more U.S. Treasury notes and bonds so we can accomplish this largess.
And who is buying these? The Saudi’s of course - a process that feeds on itself and will build to the point that all items of value in our universe will belong to the Arabs!
Remember, beginning in 1969, Henry Kissinger, as top presidential advisor, convinced the Shah of Iran to use OPEC as a cartel to enable prices of oil to rise (he said by 10 times) so that he could afford to by our U. S. of A. military hardware so he could continue his dictatorship. (This didn’t work out for the Shah, since his regime fell in 1979).
