Creative Accounting Lisbon Style!!!

CREATIVE ACCOUNTING

Wouldn’t it be nice to know where our tax dollars are actually being spent?  Can you image how nice it would be to see how much each department was really spending?  That would make it easy to see which departments are costing the Town of Lisbon the most but instead Evil Eldridge, Brooks and Bowie have devised an accounting scheme hiding actual costs from the taxpayers in order to maintain inflated departmental budgets.  Let’s take a look at a couple:

Public Works Department – In this departmental budget are the costs for street lights and fire hydrants rental.  This is a town cost and not the Public Works Department.  The Public Works Department does absolutely nothing to street light or hydrants; so why are these two line items under the Public Works Department.  I will tell you why; because these costs, which the town has no control over, make this department the most costly in town.  In other words, it is utilized to hide the excessive spending in the Police budget.

Police Department – During last town council meeting, Brooks gave a presentation on the cost of the Lisbon Communications Center.  In this presentation, Brooks openly admitted to hiding line items in other areas of the budget.  However, even after I pointed it out, Brooks never explained to the people where the costs for communications equipment and maintenance are in the budget.  If you look at the Communication Center portion of the budget, there is no cost for equipment or maintenance.  This means these lines items are deliberately placed else where to give the impression the Communication Center does not cost the taxpayers as much money as it does.  The approximate cost for the communication center is over $500,000 dollars a year.  Now you see why Brooks hides this cost from the taxpayers.  The police budget is the largest expense to the Town of Lisbon.

Why is it impossible for Evil Eldridge, Brooks and Bowie to place all line items in the appropriate department so the citizens of Lisbon can see what the real cost of doing business is? 5 Wouldn’t it be great to see what each department cost the town of Lisbon to operate annually?  I understand this would be a new concept for these people but I believe the taxpayers deserve to know where their hard earned money is going.  Hiding operational costs from the taxpayers is not transparency in government.
Larry Fillmore
Concerned Citizen