Editorial/Op
Holding Central’s City Council Accountable – Part 2
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Commentary by Dave Freneaux
What do floodplain studies and legal fees have in common? If you listen carefully at City Council meetings you might know that the answer is “Research”. The need to research was the reason given as Council members Messina, Washington and LoBue voted to delay a floodplain study that could save as many as 1,600 Central families a total of $300,000 or more each year. The need to research was also the reason given as the same trio of Council Members, Messina, Washington and LoBue, voted to intentionally under-fund the City’s budget for legal fees, and now it seems that Central may be unable to prosecute ordinance violations because the money is running out to pay for the prosecution.
The vote came on June 12th when Council Members Messina, Washington & Lobue voted 3-2 to reduce the city’s legal fees budget from $110,000, the amount everyone reasonably believed the city would spend in a year, down to $35,000, with only $5,000 of this budgeted for ordinance enforcement. I am still perplexed as to how our City Council could approve a budget that is supposed to be for an entire year, and intentionally fund only the first 60 days for legal fees.
And now, the intentional under-funding has seemingly come back to bite us. At last week’s Council meeting Council Member Washington asked the City Attorney why prosecutions of ordinance violations were not being taken care of when he quizzed: “ I see on the enforcement side that there’s a lot of work orders or legal matters that has been passed on to our City Attorney and maybe she can speak to this, but what is happening, because a few of these backs up into last August? Ms. Sheri is there any way that you can tell me what’s going on?”
City Attorney Sheri Morris responded: “Our budget for enforcement has always been limited. It’s never been enough to handle the enforcement workload. This year currently you appropriated $5,000. We have used half of that with our July hearing through today’s billing. So for the October hearing I can only process about two more complaints and I have two carryovers. So that’s four hearings and that will probably exhaust the budget with the follow-up work.”
During the June 12th Council meeting it was made clear by Council members Washington and LoBue that they suddenly, after having had weeks of time and a Council budget workshop to research and discuss the legal fees budget, needed more time to research. Those same two Council members, Messina and Washington, along with Council member LoBue, then voted 3-2 to provide only 60 days of funding for the City’s legal defense and prosecution. Now, over 90 days later, there has been no effort made by these Council Members to present any research they may have done and to fully fund the City’s budget for legal fees.
The following is the exchange regarding this issue at the June 12th Council meeting when Council members Messina and Washington responded to questions I asked in order to clarify why we were so drastically under-funding the budget:
Freneaux: Would it be fair to say that our budgets are based on our reasonable belief of what we will spend in the next fiscal year? Is that the goal here? So do we have some reasonable belief that we will only spend $30,000 in all legal fees all combined for the entire year?
Washington: This is not for an entire year.
Freneaux: OK, so what period of time are we funding the budget for? Is this for one month, two months, three months, for legal fees?
Washington: How about two months?
Freneaux: So you are proposing that we put this at $30,000 saying that is a two month budget for 2012-2013?
Washington: Yes
Freneaux: So at this point we are budgeting zero dollars for the last 10 months of 2012-2013 based on…
Mayor Watts: You can’t do that.
Washington: We are only doing this because it is a…I would like to see us look at this to see how can we possibly do things better.
Freneaux: So we are not funding the budget for the whole fiscal year?
Washington: Well yes.
Mayor Watts: Yes we are.
Freneaux: Mr. Washington said it is for the next two months. We have no reason to believe this is for the next year.
Washington: What I don’t want to happen is, in a month’s time we say, well we don’t have enough money, or we run out of money. We’re not going to run out of money. We will come back in. We are going to amend it…I would like to see it amended.
Freneaux: So what do we reasonably believe we will spend in the next year? That is my question. Isn’t that what we are supposed to be budgeting today?
Messina: We won’t know that until after we meet and discuss it.
Freneaux: But we’ve known this day is coming for a year.
Washington: It doesn’t matter Dave.
Freneaux: So we are funding it for two months, just to be clear, correct?
Messina: We are funding it for the year
Freneaux: Then you and Mr. Washington have a disagreement. OK, y’all can work this out. Thank you.
Washington: We will.
Well, over three months has now passed and they seem not to have “worked this out” as Mr. Washington offered above that they would do, and there is no evidence that they did “meet and discuss it” as Mr. Messina stated above that they would do.
I wholeheartedly encourage our Council members to do their research and to spend our tax dollars wisely, but I respectfully ask that if you are going to delay processes and impair funding in order to give yourselves time to study issues, that you actually DO go ahead and study those issues and come back and implement the strategies you have developed in your research. If you are given three months to research funding a floodplain study, please take that time to do the research. If you make it clear that you need three months to study legal fees, please do not wait until those three months are gone and we are out of money and can no longer prosecute Ordinance violations to start actually doing the research.
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