What a fat headed statement: "We spend 62 percent of our total city budget to protect others with police and fire. That to me is an enormous amount of money when we have other things that we need to do,” said Collins" Mr Collins, this city is still not safe with the 62% we do spend so saying we need to cut the budget in this area is assinine. Again, instead of cutting cronies from the King Willie era and those hanger ons that the dope we have in office put in place, we would rather axe the people who protect us. I understand the problems with the budget, I truly do, but the fact is, there is money in the coffers that CAN be used to pay off the school system and get us out from under that cloud and you refuse to use it. The city council for the most part has little or no brains and ditto for the mayor. Their solution is to cut the legs out from under the employees all the time instead of getting rid of waste, which part of the employees are waste because they were given high paying jobs simply because of the current or previous mayor and their positions could be eliminated! Instead, the people who work the hardest to keep this city running, police, fire, public works workers get their pay cut and their jobs axed instead of the fat cats in the offices in their suits and ties,knowing the current mayor would never cut their job. Once again this city is run by idiots.