As many of you have now heard, I temporarily stopped the annual city council budget process last night. I did this for very good reasons, and I did it following the rules of City Council, our Charter, Mass General Law, and the Massachusetts Open Meeting Law.
I am livid that we received the proposed FY20 City Budget on June 12th, and that the Mayor and a small group of City Councilors want to jam it through without proper investigation and deliberation by the City Council.
I’ve been doing this a long time. The residents and business owners have repeatedly demanded that we control the budget, slow down the tax increases, and reduce spending. Yet, just about every year, the Mayors and majority of the City Council keep going in the other direction. The budgets go up and up and up – unchecked. The City Councilor’s ignore glaring long-term problems and keep passing the buck.
We have what’s called a Strong Council Weak Mayor form of government. It’s time the City Council acted like it.
So here’s what happened last night. There was a public hearing. The room was full. Several people spoke, and most spoke about high taxes, fixing roads, and cutting spending.
After that meeting ended, a Special City Council Meeting of the Whole was scheduled to recommend budget cuts. However, as of last night, the budget was still in the possession of the Finance Committee, and had not been referred back to the full City Council. This sounds like a minor thing, but it really is a critical part of our process, and it ensures that committees have the time and freedom to do their job, and make recommendations, before the full City Council gets involved in deliberations. This year, the Finance Committee held a few meetings last week, but they never got to the point of deliberation or making recommendations.
Mayor Sullivan is quoted in today’s paper saying three things I’d like to address. First he said “The Finance Committee always enters into a Meeting of the Whole and the entire City Council is allowed to participate.” That’s true, however, the Finance Committee ALWAYS meets ahead of this meeting, deliberates the budget, and makes recommendations. Then, they make a report to the full City Council at a regular meeting or a special meeting of the whole BEFORE the City Council proceeds. That didn’t happen this year. Personally, I think this was done on purpose to jam through the budget on a short time-frame, and so that the Finance Committee wouldn’t have to make tough recommendations.
The second statement by the Mayor was “There’s internal City Council issues that have gotten personal with each other, that have now affected the entire city, and that’s extremely unfortunate. Actually, what happened (tonight) had nothing to do with the city budget, but it will be affecting department heads that are trying to manage their personal budgets, and now don’t have any idea how to do it.” There might be something to this, but I for one am sick and tired of the City Council just rubber-stamping the budgets, and the mayor disrespecting our rights and process. By law, we have 45 days to review the budgets and to approve or deny any item. There is absolutely no obligation to do this by June 30th. He chose to give us the budget on June 12th – the latest we’ve ever received a budget proposal in all my year on the City Council. His choice – not ours.
His third quote was “They (City Council) did a disservice to everyone in the room. Nothing was accomplished.” Well I disagree. First off, any disservice was done, and any time pressure was initiated by not getting his proposed budget to the City Council in a timely manner. Second, by delaying the process, the Finance Committee will be forced to do their job: either make recommendations for cuts, or report back that they recommend that the City Council vote for about $4 million in new spending, a $2.8 million tax increase, no increase in road funding, and make no real effort to resolve the long-term financial problems. Further, the rest of the City Council has heard from the public, and now has time to review the budget details, review the minutes of the Finance Committee meetings, and to come up with some suggested changes based on this diligent investigation and deliberation.
The short-term consequence of this delay could mean the city operates month-to-month on a 1/12th budget based on last year’s approved appropriations. That’s doable. Not ideal, but doable. The entire state government will be doing it this year as well. The mayor may be disappointed, but again, we got the budget on June 12th.
Hopefully you saw my article in Tuesday’s Westfield News. If you review that you’ll see there are some great financial challenges. However, this budget process isn’t rocket science. There are less than 20 key summary line items in the budget. It’s very easy to put together a multi-year plan. There’s no reason in the world that the mayor’s proposed City Budget cannot be created months ahead of time. And, there’s no reason in the world a multi-year budget can’t be prepared using best efforts and estimates.
We have to find ways to reduce the multi-million dollar spending and tax increases each year and to address our long-term financial challenges. This isn’t easy. The Mayors and City Councilors all have to make tough, sometimes unpopular, choices for the best long-term impact for the City and everyone who live, works, or plays here.
If you have any questions or concern about this process, or about our budgets, please feel free to reach out to me at any time.
Regards,
Dave Flaherty
City Councilor
[email protected]
