Surprise, surprise. Metro has a budget shortfall.

When you are drunk on being the "it" city and take no thought for tomorrow and spend money like a drunken sailor, you might have a budget shortfall.

When you have a mayor gallivanting all over the globe like royalty to conferences of questionable necessity in order to facilitate her affair, you might have a budget shortfall.

When you have the city throwing money at an unnecessary hospital that no one wants to  use and whose primary function to is boost the collective ego of the Black community, you might have a budget shortfall.

When you spend $60 million to build three miles of sidewalk, you might have a budget shortfall.

When your schools are so bad that as the population grows enrollment shrinks and as a result the state education appropriation to the schools shrink, you might have a budget shortfall.

When the revenue grows from $1.81 billion in 2014 to $2.2 billion in 2018 and yet you must dip into the rainy day fund to meet current obligations, you might have a budget shortfall.

Metro does not have a revenue problem, Metro has a spending problem.

For The Tennessean coverage of the issue, follow this link.

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