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    Letter to The Editor

    Letter to The Editor: The Blob Effect

    3 Comments

    logo_lettereditorBy Henry Twombly
    (June 20, 2018)

    In an earlier article I included the chart below to show what I called the Blob Effect.  I compared the growth of city government to the alien creature in the 1958 movie, The Blob.  This organism kept on growing bigger and bigger, just like our City staff and budgets as this chart attests…

    20180612_letter

    I have come to realize that these ever-increasing budgets (which Home Rule allows) are a means by which the City extends its tentacles into the community.  By giving more and more funds to more and more organizations, the City makes these associations more and more dependent on its largess.  Obviously the more money the establishment receives and the greater percentage that money constitutes of its revenues, the more dependent the establishment is on the City.  So when the vote on Home Rule comes around, the City reminds these beneficiaries who butters their bread.

    The greater the City’s budget, the greater its largess to make these organizations dependent on the City, and hence the greater their support for Home Rule.  Whether it’s conscious or unwitting, the City is buying the allegiance (and votes) of these non-profits and businesses.  In effect these dependent foundations become a part of the Blob as extensions of the City.
     
    This is yet another way the deck gets stacked against residents as well as another reason to vote against Home Rule.

    3 Comments

    1. John Roberts on

      That change in the city budget for bureaucrats looks like about a plus 30% since 2014. Besides the ” Big Daddy ” handout aspect fat budgets build empires to justify a salary increase for the top dog running the blob. Now top dog wants to add the new ” sustainability position ” at $100,000/year and aims soon to get the attorney’s budget to a whopping million/year.

      Henry you advocate a NO on the home rule vote ( big spender dream ) in the August election. I would add clean house at the same time in the city council member vote, except let’s keep John Currivan the only non blobber.

      Thank you Henry for being a real plus asset in our community.

    2. Warren Woodward on

      Good Job, Henry!

      Sounds like a self-licking ice cream cone to me.

      From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

      In political jargon, a self-licking ice cream cone is a self-perpetuating system that has no purpose other than to sustain itself. The phrase appeared to have been first used in 1992, in On Self-Licking Ice Cream Cones, a paper by Pete Worden about NASA’s bureaucracy.

    3. Michael Schroeder on

      In 2000 according to census data, our population was 10,168
      In 2014 it was 10,281
      In 2017 the estimate is 10,397

      So in 18 years we have increased in size by 229 folks. In the mid 2000s the Chamber said we had 4 million tourists annually. I believe they are saying 4 million today.

      The Chamber of Commerce’s goodie bag of money since 2014 has increased 300% – not to mention Henry’s numbers. A lot of little silos seemed to have popped up. That sucking sound is out of control growth in a town that isn’t growing.