Fourth in a series

Re “What’s Cookin’with Tiggs at Tellefson Park?”

Along the early campaign trail, Marcus Tiggs, City Council candidate, frequently addresses the state of City Hall finances, and he recently explained why.

“Everything relates to finance,” he said. “Finance is the fabric of what is going on. If someone says it isn’t and everything is perfect, then no one is going to be any different. You can’t distinguish anybody because then all we can say is, ‘I love my city, I love my city. I want to keep parks. I want new parks. I am going to have bicycle lanes.’

“Okay, but to do all that,” said Mr. Tiggs, a bankruptcy attormey, “it costs money. “Another thing is, when we had the Great Recession, we were able to get through that better than a lot of other cities. That was fantastic. One reason was, we had the benefit of the (since-outlawed) Redevelopment Agency.

“We were able to use certain pieces of that money for, let’s say, a police officer who did something that directly or indirectly related to Redevelopment. All the cities had that, but it is gone now,” Mr. Tiggs said.

“So if there is some sort of slowdown in the economy, what are we going to do?

“For me, I am thinking of the future, and to the extent we can, I want us to become more efficient.”

(To be continued)