WESTFIELD – The City Council approved several inter-departmental transfers and appropriations Monday night as it moved money to close the Fiscal Year 2014 budget and to move any unencumbered funds into the city’s stabilization account.
Mayor Daniel M. Knapik submitted several year-end appropriations, forcing the council to do its own math to come up with the amount of free cash and reserve for unforeseen funds available to be transferred into stabilization.
The council has to address the appropriations and transfers before it could get to the bottom line for the stabilization transfer, which the councilors had done at the previous June 19 meeting.
The council’s June 19 vote to move free cash and reserve for unforeseen was overturned by City Auditor Deborah Strycharz who issued a finding that all appropriations have to originate in the city’s executive branch, the mayor’s office, and that the city’s legislative branch, the City Council, can approve or disapprove appropriations submitted by the executive branch, but cannot initiate that action on its own.
At-large Councilor James R. Adams initiated the discussion when he asked if there were funds remaining in the free cash and reserve for unforeseen accounts following the council’s June 19 vote to sweep remaining funds in those accounts into stabilization.
Ward 1 Councilor Christopher Keefe, serving as President Pro Tem in the absence of Council President Brent B. Bean II, explained the finding issued by Strycharz.
“There is $2.4 million and change in free cash,” Keefe said. “The auditor (issued a finding that) all appropriations have to originate with the mayor.”
Ward 4 Councilor Mary O’Connell said that she researched the City Council records for the past nine years, finding that the council acted, on its own, to make the year-end financial transfers.
“We’ve always done this on our own,” O’Connell said. “They have never been initiated by the mayor in office at that time. Now all of a sudden it’s not right to do it that way.”
At-large Councilor Brian Sullivan said the council members had the ability to vote no on the appropriations and then approve the free cash amounts they approved at the June 19 meeting.
The stabilization transfer was tabled until the end of the meeting after the council considered several appropriation requests, approving some, but rejecting others which council members felt could wait until the 2015 fiscal year began July 1.
The councilors approved a free cash appropriation of $58,044 for Westfield Vocational-Technical High School educations accounts and a $38,655 transfer from the reserve for unforeseen to replace the wireless technology at Westfield High School.
Keefe, as the council’s Finance Committee chairman, usually does the math but had no computer access at Bean’s desk, relying on At-large Councilor David A. Flaherty to do the math to calculate the amounts being swept into stabilization.
Keefe requested Flaherty to break it down for clarity of the motions to transfer from free cash and reserve for unforeseen. Flaherty calculated that the total amount being transferred into stabilization, following approval of the appropriations, at $2,411,875.22 from free cash and $12,406.64 from reserve for unforeseen.
The funds were transferred into the city’s stabilization account to make them immediately available with the start of the 2015 fiscal year. Had they remained in the free cash and reserve for unforeseen accounts, they would have not been available to the city until the state Department of Revenue certified the city’s books, which usually happens in November or December.
Appropriations from stabilization require the affirmative vote of nine council members.
