RICHARD E. ONOFREY JR.
WESTFIELD – Finance Committee Chairman Richard E. Onofrey Jr., has set a compressed interview schedule with city department heads and boards to discuss their individual budgets as the City Council prepares to vote on the proposed 2014 fiscal year budget in June.
Onofrey said at the last City Council meeting that plans to have the Finance Committee review completed by the second meeting of the city council slated for June 20, 2013. The 2014 fiscal year begins just 10 days later on July 1, 2013.
“I do plan to have it wrapped up so we can act on it at that second June meeting,” Onofrey said. “My goal is to have a Finance Committee recommendation for the City Council at that June 20 meeting. I’ve also built in time for the following week for emergency meetings if some councilors are not comfortable with voting on it at one meeting.”
Onofrey front loaded departments with smaller budgets for the review sessions which begin this Thursday at 6 p.m. The Finance Committee will meet with the Auditing, Purchasing, Treasurer and Debt, Collector, Law, Technology, and Parks & Recreation departments, as well as dealing with items already in committee.
The second interview session is slated for Monday with the Community Development, Public Property and Buildings, the Off-Street Parking, Airport, Building, Engineering, Council on Aging and Veteran Services departments.
The Finance Committee will meet at 6 p.m. on Thursday June 6, the first City Council session of June, to discuss the city’s insurance budget, then will resume departmental session on Monday, June 10, meeting with the Police, Fire, Public Safety Communications, and Public Works departments, with the School Department session scheduled alone on June 11.
The Finance Committee will conduct its budget review on June 13, with the full City Council budget workshop slated for June 16.
Onofrey said that he has compared the initial 2013 budget, the amended 2013 budget with any additional appropriations with the numbers of the proposed 2014 budget.
“I’m looking for departments which have asked for more money in the 2014 budget than they spent last year in the amended budget,” Onofrey said. “If they didn’t spend all they had available, why are they asking for more?”
“That’s what I’m looking at. I don’t know what the rest of the Finance (Committee) members are looking at,” Onofrey said. “I told all of the City Council members to email me if they have specific questions for a specific department and I have not gotten any responses, so 10 minutes per department is more than anybody has asked for.”
