16 U.S. Cities That Could Face Bankruptcy in 2011

My city of Milwaukie, Oregon is cutting its' budget by 17% in 12-13. Their solution to this is to pay for a single A baseball stadium to make money. It's a bizarre vedrsion of 'we have a barn, lets do a show!" Nevermind Portland, our neighbor has lost
interest in AAA ball and switched to soccer. Then there is the
stadium in Salem , and another coming very near us. Mind you,
there has been a study which admitted the only 'benefit' was
'community pride'. The penciling out shows we will loose our
municipal asses in this flight of imagination.

The worst of it is that they could not be pursuaded to do any of their own research before they spent a tad under $300k to be
told what theyu could have found on line with the question "does
baseball pay?" The simple answer is 'no' . The citiens who were manipulated on the citizens task force, once the high-
priced consulted dropped the truth in front of them were turned
in less than 20 seconds to accept approval of the stadium for
"COMMUNITY PRIDE"!

These low level teams play 38 home games a year and ticket
prices are $10, tops. They rent out no more than for 50 outside
events a year. Seating is about 4,500 but they know that few
stadiums use much more than half that. The bill on this thing,
with stadium, hotel, land, buying out a hightway dept and moving their facility, buying a brew pub, building a nightclub, restaurant
and maybe retail space, oh yest, other booming business to
buy out and kill the living wage jobs for low-wage, part time jobs,
we are talking MONEY.

They didn't ask about the money, nor did they ask how much
it would be raised by 'debt service' (interest to you and me).

Our community is significiantly lower income than Portland, and
we are older. Out county is 3rd hightest in foreclosurs, our kids
rank 1 in 4 as food insecure. Jobs are continuing to be lost in
the large numbers by more and more companies as the officials
pay themselves on the back, saying 'we are winning this'.

I guess they don't read the internet or watch the news. I am sure
they don't know what is happening in euorpe as people are being
destroyed by the greedy, stupid, pitiless 1%, bankers, and the
fools go decided to intertie all our economies. I am certian they
don't get the connection, and rethink this Lets have a ballteam.
Oh, did I tell you that there is very nice FREE stadium across the road

We will have our own version of a bridge to nowhere.

Watch for us on the growing list of towns that have joined the
cities with lots of COMMUNITY PRIDE, and not much else.
P.S. The price will be over 100M with interest doubling it and
a daily tab of nearly $9,000.

AMEN~~ Great comments.

Listen to what I just read, they are saying that the cities will all go bankrupt, no more money to borrow, when this happens, no more garbage collection! in cities, etc, they are taking asphalt roads and grinding them up into gravel roads, ( no maintenance) this will be coming...the sicko Federal Government is eventually going to retrieve and take everyone's 401 K's AND IRA's - there is approx. 4.5 Trillion dollars in both USA people's acct s. When the Government goes bankrupt... they will take our money!!! Also, right now... there a some cities that have told their police to not respond to burglary, theft and robbery! they can't afford to go out anymore!! YIKES.. Get prepared please.

All the aforementioned jurisdictions that are in dire straights are not surprisingly, in dark BLUE jurisdictions. This is what liberalism does, but the morons who voted for the party of entitlement that puts them in bankruptcy will continue to do so and blame the other guy. It's way past time to reimplement the poll taxes and literacy tests, and BTW literacy tests and ballots in ENGLISH ONLY!!!!

This just the tip of the Iceburg. I hope it gets a lot worse before it gets better. Too many losers have been nursing off the guvmint trough for too long. We have troops in Afghanistan war playing the terrorist game at tax payers expense. Send them all home and tell them to get real jobs! I don't need them protecting me from Teli-bunnies.

In Illinois, a good place to start is the County (County Hospital). That is just about the worst run mess there is. What with the stupid rule that a department head can put through X number of purchase orders on a daily basis without going through the budget process, the budget is half gone before the general budget is voted upon. Doctors bringing in their private patients on the County's dime for expensive diagnostic tests; taking off with expensive equipment paid for by taxpayers; foreign doctors bringing their relatives into the country and shunting them through the system for free treatment and expensive diagnostic tests, invariably ahead of native Americans who have waited months in line for an appointment. Rush doctors who get paid wages way above what is paid to the County doctors on a charge-back; maintaining incompetent workers because they are in the unions. Let the lazy accounting department set up the proper billing procedures to recoup money spent on the care of patients who have the means to pay at least a portion of their care. It's a complete mess. It's a complete mess. Millions could be saved if they hire qualified people.

Buy stock in U-Haul. We've been given an unsolvable problem with mixed time-lines.

The immanent problem is patching the municipals so they don't crash. The cause is the greed of the municipal worker and pencil pusher.

No one can survive an abrupt salary or pension cut of 50% even if they are deserved. They have to weened off slowly. so they can downsize to the smaller paycheck. This process takes a long time, and is expensive. But, time and money we ain't got.

Obummer blew any chance of the Feds saving the ballgame on getting the tax cuts for the rich..

The only solution appears to let that municipality decay to a Tombstone where the gun you pack is the law. Hope the area's decent citizens find U-Hauls and move to where it's saver. And avoid traveling to those areas (California, New Jersey, Michigan and northern Illinois like the bubonic plague.

Here’s a start, cap all city & state workers salary at $100k that includes city councils, commissioners, directors, teachers, principals, superintendents, etc. Make the police salaried employees that don’t get overtime. Switch to a 10 hour, 4 day work week, it cuts down on overtime, esp. if the buildings are closed 3 days a week. Audit and cut twice as many jobs as the audit says to. Audits are generally beefed up to sound like an employee does a lot when in actuality they don’t. When I used to work for the Feds I replaced 4 workers or absorbed their duties and I still wasn’t that busy. One person spent all day doing something that I could eventually do in 30 minutes. On paper it sounded like a lot of work but in reality it was very little. It seemed like a third of the people did two thirds of the work there. Also phase out entitlement programs that have no return on investment. It’s a start.

the city of joliet did not cut, meaning fire or lay off 1 person! this city proposed such an attractive early retirement packages to those who left that they would of been stupid not to take them. the city is now forced to go into funding the deficit through the money they have in the reserves(savings account). when the city pays off or near that deficit amount, and exhaust the savings account, guess what? the city becomes broke! the only way out is to lay off-cut jobs dramatically! there are some city workers who do not believe this is going to happen, but there is no other way out either. another problem is with pensions, the city workers pensions include previous years worked including over time! this is totally wrong! if a city worker gets hurt, by law workman's compensation is 66.66% of your base pay wages, that is it. the pensions should be based on at most 75% of your annual rate of pay and no over time included! there are retirees who are collecting over $6-$7k a month on retirement, (some earn more) with out social security income! the city never prepared for this the way it spent money by hiring and creating foolish positions! you can only get so much money out of the taxpayers, after that, you have to get smart and do what is right!

If you don't believe government salaries, pensions and benefits are the problem and fixing them is the solution.......you are an idiot

Government must cut back like the private sector

Check out city #3… I’m happy we’re SO on the ball that we (San Jose, CA.) had to have an audit to figure out our “supervisors” are making too much money… at an average of $250k/annual you think? A little disturbing and disgusting that 36 months plus AND counting into the financial meltdown/crisis that SJ is getting around to saving us $33 million, thanks a LOT! Now for our Santa Clara Fire Chief (to name JUST one!) making close to half a mill a year I guess he’s in for the next audit or we’ll just wait to declare a bankruptcy and think it over after that… geese all the brain power in our city and this is where our best thinking has gotten us. Notice we don’t make many lists but we are in the top 3 on this one… nice!