Tenth (10th) Pacific Council and Discussion Thread

[DemPGH]

Hello, Pacific.

This will be our thread for the business of the 10th Council. We'll have carryover from the 9th Council, and I want to remind everyone that we have a number of bills still open. We'll handle them in turn - after the stimulus.

I also promise that the outline for the stimulus is coming. Soon. I want us to focus on it before returning to the bills, but we will get to them.

TheCranberry is interested in serving as Speaker, so we should handle that here, but we can wait a day or two to organize the Council.

[DemPGH]

Okay, here's a rough plan, and what I'd like to do is divide this up so we're all taking a part of it. That way we can knock it out quicker. Whoever wants to chip in is fine with me. And we don't have to allocate it just this way - it's a starting point.

I could do science and education since I have definite ideas about those.

Infrastructure: 5 billion dollars
Including a Rural Housing Plan

Investments in business: 4.5 billion dollars

Educational Initiatives: 2 billion dollars
Books, tech, STEM, and physical education and after school programs

Investments in Science: 2 billion dollars
Medicine, environment & green technology, engineering

Environmental Emergencies: 1.5 billion dollars
Included will be 50 million dollars for mudslide assistance
Also region wide drought relief

[DemPGH]

Outstanding! Very detailed. I'll work on mine soon.

We'll put the whole thing together under the "First Stimulus Act" or something like that, get some final feedback on it, and then pass it.

[DemPGH]

Excellent, Mr. Cranberry! That leaves Education, Science, and Business. Again, I want to tackle Education and Science, so that will leave business investment, and I know we had a few people floating around who were interested in making some suggestions there, so I may send a few PMs when time permits.

[DemPGH]

Yes, go ahead. The const. says the council shall elect a speaker, so I take that to be 2/3.

I'll be on a bit this morning, out all afternoon, and back on tonight, fyi (USA eastern time).

[DemPGH]

Exemptions are made for the Cabinet outside of GM, unless that has changed.

More tomorrow.

[DemPGH]

Oh well... So I guess you'll have to appoint a third councillor, DemPGH. I guess Devin would do the job

By the way, what do you think of the already existing parts? Should I change something?

No, you get an A+.

Here's the timeline: My two will be done tomorrow, and the reason it's taking a few days is because it requires me to actually look into the matter and not make up stuff, plus I'm a little busy IRL right now. So I'll have mine tomorrow, we'll finish the business one by Wednesday, send it upstairs, get final feedback, and then pass it by 1 May.

...I can't be a councilor?

I'm a little confused on the matter, but we'll get around to it. There appears to be difference of opinion. The rule on that was made a little more complicated recently, I think.

[DemPGH]

Okay, this is just best guess, I guess. You know, we're talking about a whole region of states in a game, so. . .

The science one will be directed more at universities.

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[DemPGH]

Excellent. Once this stimulus is out of the way, we'll get back to the bills. Also, if some of this has been taken care of elsewhere (like books), we'll use the money from the stimulus to cover it.

Again, adjustments to figurs are fine. I'm guessing on a lot of it.

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[DemPGH]

I think that's also good.

So there's just business open?

Yep. And thanks.

Hopefully, I can get it in tonight, and then we can give this to the full committee tomorrow, or I'll have it done tomorrow and we can hopefully still give it to the full committee tomorrow. Probably won't be terribly detailed, and the committee can put their good business sense to it. A couple of people were going to help out with it, but it looks like it's me, myself, and I now.

[DemPGH]

Okay, I'll be back on later this evening - much to do today. This is what I could come up with, so we should have over these five bills all of the money spent. So the committee can begin looking at it and we will pass it as "The First Stimulus Act" or something and put these five bills together.

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[DemPGH]

Okay, here it is. We can modify numbers as need be.

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[DemPGH]

We'll wait a couple days for everybody to look at it and then we'll vote - just so we pass it by 1 May.

[DemPGH]

Yeah, that should be read 'One Billion.' We'll just fix it. Good job, Poirot - I missed that. Of course, when I was typing mine and changing the figures around I did that a few times.

[DemPGH]

Hey, we have a queue! Nice job. I remember being happy when we just had a council!

[DemPGH]

Well - I saw that the Wiki is very, very not up to date when it comes to Pacific issues - there is still the old Pacific flag, the statue was last updated in PJ's times; and I don't really want to talk about the other parts...
I would update the wiki, but I didn't figure out how... So, could you tell me how to do? I would update the Pacific issues then

Man, you've been a massive help. That would be awesome - I've been meaning to do that. We also need to get the 4th Const. in there along with its amendment. I just haven't had the time, and oh yeah, I'm running for a certain national office now. To his credit, PJ religiously updated our wiki, and sadly, probably only a few people ever took notice.

You just need to have wiki access. You PM Dave Leip and he gives you wiki edit access. Sometimes that can take a while, other times it happens right away. If you have trouble or any questions, let me know. Otherwise, at minimum I will have to get that Constitution in there.

[DemPGH]

Hey, guys, if there are a lot of PJ's short, brief bills left, let's take them in chunks to decide if they are applicable enough to even bring to the floor. If they're applicable, we can talk about them, but if they don't actually address any issues, let's bypass them. We can do it publicly or by PM.

[DemPGH]

Just FYI: Assuming it's needed, we have Stimulus II coming in July, I believe. We'll have the 11th Council by then, but I wanted to note it here so it would not be forgotten about.

If I'm President I'll clearly authorize it, because I think the first one we put together did a lot of good.

[DemPGH]

Noted. That's fine - we have those items on the docket, so we'll get to them as we can. I'm just glad we're not behind schedule on it.

It could be that we may not have to adjust the budget much - since we have a stimulus coming again, maybe some tax breaks to small businesses and I want to look at education, mainly.

[DemPGH]

Ok - so you think we should just be adjusting a few numbers, but mostly letting the old budget be?

I'm not sure. It was never discussed since I've been here. I know we cut taxes, so we'll have to account for that and maybe we can do something for small business and education. If PJ didn't do something with it, then budgetary attention might go all the way back to Wolfentoad, IDK.

[DemPGH]

Wolfentoad was right before the NMAM-time, right?

Wolfy was like 13 or something and had to leave because he both had a lot of problems and caused a lot of problems. Then I think NVGonzalez was on the scene, and he went inactive on day 1. Then it was NM-AM time. Spamage briefly came back for a while as well and tried to right the ship a bit. Then PJ and and then me, Flo, you, etc.

[DemPGH]

That's very good, Devin, and yeah, I was thinking we'd need to figure out what that would cost and if we wanted to allocate some money for it, like inspections mainly.

Someone will need to do some calculations to figure out what the revenues would be on the whole budget from the adjusted taxes, and that sounds like a GM-y kind of thing.

And we might have one or two bills still open. The stimulus won't come until July 1, and we have till the end of July to allocate it, but we could start a little early.

[DemPGH]

So should we hand the budget calculation over to Simfan? (Is he actually Councillor now, btw?)

I guess if we start discussing the Stimulus with the beginning of the new council, we would have more than enough time and not just pass the bill on the last date possible again

Yeah, Council elections are in two days and I think we have three people! Might be some drama with the write-in, though. So Simfan is appointed until then.

Yes, we can start on the stimulus as soon as the new council wants. I'd recommend coming up with a few major areas on which to spend the money and then fill it all in like we did last time.