PUT IT ALL ON RED

Dear Mayor McCheese,

As the head of your fiscal policy team, I am honored to help you build a sustainable economic future for Scottsdale. After a tough campaign in which you were slandered as a “McDonald’s corporate cronie” and a “man with a cheeseburger for a head,” I was excited to see what sweeping changes you would make to this town. That said, the team has reviewed your preliminary budget for the next fiscal year, and I have some concerns.

First, you project revenue to be $400 million, yet your projected expenses total $5 billion. At first I thought, wow, he must have gotten confused by all the zeroes, there’s no way he intentionally drafted such an unbalanced budget.

Of that projected revenue, you estimate we will receive $350 million of it in taxes, a reasonable estimate. As for where the remaining $50 million dollars is coming from, you wrote down “Free McDonald’s”. Now, Mr. Mayor, I’m not sure what municipality you came from, but here in Scottsdale, we pay for all goods and services with money. McRibs are not accepted as legal tender. Then you have down here that $5 million will come from “bun royalties.” I don’t even know.

For expenditures, you started out practical, granting budget increases to waste water treatment and street repair, issues that our citizens are extremely concerned about. Things get weird at the next line-item, where you wrote “Public safety”, then added parenthetically “and cheese.” I thought maybe there were specific public health issues related to cheese that you wanted to address during your tenure.

It became clear past that point that you were maximizing budget expenditures with no concordant increase in revenue to purchase vast quantities of cheese along with a party boat and mansion. At one point, you try to hide the purchase of cheese by calling it “queso.” Sir, my last name is Gutierrez, and everybody knows what queso is.

Also, what is a full-time Cheese Wrangler? Honestly, I’d really just like to know.

This explains the salary and benefits package table you sent to your employees (including me) earlier this month.

Mr. Mayor, I’ve drafted a sensible budget (attached) that balances revenues and expenditures while ensuring we meet the needs of our citizens. This budget would eliminate all cheese-related line items, along with the party boat and mansion.

However, as a sign of goodwill, I am leaving the queso budget intact.

Sincerely,
Alice Gutierrez
Chief Fiscal Policy Analyst, McCheese administration