WESTFIELD – The City Council and Finance Committee will review and vote this week on the 2013 fiscal year budget presented by Mayor Daniel M. Knapik.
The Finance Committee is slated to meet tonight to assess any possible cuts to the $130,450,594 city budget. More than $14 million of that number is funding derived from service fees, such as those from water, sewer, solid waste and ambulance accounts.
Tomorrow night the council will meet as a Committee of the Whole to review the budget with the Finance Committee members and to consider motions for specific budget cuts.
The council is slated to meet on Wednesday to vote on the budget.
The Finance Committee completed its department-by-department review last Thursday with an impression that the budget is austere.
“What we’ve been doing the last six years that I’ve been on the committee is cutting,” Ward 5 Councilor Richard E. Onofrey Jr., said this morning. “I like to find someplace to save taxpayers’ some money, but at this point this budget is very lean.”
Onofrey said that he anticipates little modification of the proposed budget tonight during his committee’s final review process.
Tuesday the entire City Council will assemble as a Committee of the Whole to review the Finance Committee’s recommendations and discuss any motion to cut placed on the floor.
“I’d be surprised if anything major is brought out. Unfortunately, I don’t see a lot of opportunity to cut at this time,” Onofrey said.
Knapik cut most department’s capital expense accounts, in some departmental budgets, down to zero dollars.
Onofrey said he anticipates that funding for capital investment will come to the City Council later this year as either free cash appropriations, or more likely capital equipment bond.
The city was recently notified by Moody’s Investors Services that the city’s rating for bonds and short-term borrowing remain high. The city has an A-1 bonding rating and a MIG-1 short-term borrowing rate that is resulting in a capability to borrow at a very low rate.
Moody’s cited the city’s strong fiscal management and the fact that is has had an operating surplus for each of the past five years, money used to build the reserve accounts.
“The council, in cooperation with a couple of mayors, has worked hard to get us into this position,” Onofrey said.
Knapik has continued to allocated funds to the city’s strategic reserve accounts to continue to build a financial buffer in the current economic climate.
The rating also reflects market interest in the city’s bonds, Moody’s noted in its report to the city. Westfield had four institutions bid for the municipal note sold on April 4, 2012 and five bids on a note sold on Feb. 16, 2011.
Onofrey said the low interest rates are “phenomenal” and that Knapik will act on the opportunity to met department capital needs.
“I fully anticipate that the mayor will come back to the council with a bond request to get the Fire and Public Works Departments fleets back to where they should be,” Onofrey said. “If we’re getting something under 1 percent, it’s a good time to do that.”
