WESTFIELD – City Council President Brent B. Bean II said he does not plan to call for a special meeting Thursday to enable the council to set a residential shift needed to calculate the 2015 fiscal year property taxes.
The City Council voted last week to continue the public hearing on the residential shift with the expectation that it would meet in a special session this Thursday to take that vote.
The council sent the tax-related motions to its Finance Committee. Finance Chairman Christopher Keefe said that he would not bring those motions to the floor for a vote until he was provided additional information by Mayor Daniel M. Knapik.
Bean said this morning that there “is no real reason to conduct a special meeting because neither side is budging’ and that “the majority of the council feels the same way as Chris (Keefe).”
“At this point the Finance Committee chairman is holding those motions (in committee) until he feels the levy issue is resolved,” Bean said. “The finance chairman believes that we have enough (money) in the reserve accounts to be able to do less than the 1.25 (property tax) increase requested by the mayor.”
“The Council members and the mayor both have the city at heart, what is good for the city,” Bean said. “The mayor believes that we need a little more (tax revenue) money to keep going forward. Chris (Keefe) believes there is enough money in reserve to give a tax break this year.”
“The reality at this point is that if the tax bills are not mailed by Jan. 1, 2015, we’re at the point, under state law, that another bill will not go out until April 1, so the city will be looking at short-term borrowing to have the cash flow we need as a city,” Bean said. “We’re looking at interest of about $135,000 on the short-term borrowing. It’s a frustrating situation.”
“We need to get together on this issue and do it within the next couple of days or run the risk of costing the city that $135,000 in interest,” Bean said. “I’m not happy that everything else in the Finance Committee is also being held up. There is a transfer of School Department funds to the Payroll Department because of consolidation, money needed to hire additional payroll staff.
Knapik, in an open letter to Keefe published in the Monday edition of the Westfield News, said that “over the past several year the City Council and my Administration have worked together to build the (Reserve) Accounts from a precarious position where the city’s reserve were less than 1 percent of our annual budget to today’s more comfortable level.”
Knapik said the $6.2 million recently certified by the state Department of Revenue “does not represent a recurring revenue source.”
More than $4 million of that amount was the result of a one-time bond premium rebate.
Knapik said the current 2015 fiscal year budget is short by $3.5 million and that because of revenue deficits projections for fiscal year 2016 “and beyond, we must not squander non-reoccurring money on operational obligations.”
