Check out the new features at the MCRC website, including a section that examines the city budget and items that are nice but not necessary.

Mayor R.T. Rybak wants to cut essential services, police, fire, and city street maintenance, to offset a potential 2.15% reduction in state funding. Shouldn't Rybak first consider cuts to other departments to make up for this miniscule shortfall in a budget of $1.3 billion? We took a look at the city's 2010 budget and found many nice, but not necessary projects that could easily be trimmed down. In fact, many of these expenditures are not the primary responsibility of city government and could be more appropriately and efficiently done by the private sector.

For example, the Community Planning/Economic Development (CPED) has a budget of $86,587,525, over 400 employees, and a mission to "grow a sustainable city." This massive bureaucracy is a tangled web of departments that uses taxpayer dollars to give out interest free mortgages and delve into land speculation while pushing a central planning agenda.