Board of Aldermen Page 10
August 9, 2016
you allow it to be filled up with revenues and it never violates the spending cap because it’s not general
fund expenditure. It becomes a self-funded expenditure using revenues that used to be used in place of
taxes so mathematically it ends up being identical to this override. | would much rather take the money,
if it's available, and pay it directly instead of going through this thing. Thank you.
Alderman Schoneman
| also sit on the Budget Review Committee and that committee recommended final passage by a
majority. In fact, | was the only member of that committee who voted against it and | will maintain that
vote against it. This first came up in the last term. It was a $2.7 million transfer into a bucket that was
created to receive funds that were apparently already there for the purpose of enabling us to spend this
money outside of the regular appropriation path for the fiscal year and enable us to spend more within
that without violating the spending cap. That failed and it came back this term with $2.3 million, again,
just to create a bucket to receive funds to enable more spending without violating the cap. That failed
also and it came back a third time for about $350,000, again just to create a bucket. Now here we are
just creating a bucket but at this stage it should be very clear what the purpose of the bucket is. It’s to
allow funds to be transferred to that more money in fiscal ’18 can be spent that would otherwise be spent
and that’s the issue. It doesn’t require the ten votes because it’s not technically a spending cap override
but by moving it out it becomes what is often referred to as an end-around the spending cap. The end
result will be that the $900,000 that the legislation recommends to go into this fund will allow that
$900,000 to be spent within the spending cap without violating it. | think it's a dangerous bucket and |
don’t support it.
Alderman Siegel
It is just a bucket and every decision made other than creating a bucket is an individual decision by the
Board of Aldermen; whether or not to transfer money. Either money that is already appropriated which is
not a spending override, otherwise | guess we are not going to fund our Capital Equipment Reserve
Fund account since that’s part of the recommended legislation that we have before us for a first reading
this evening. Again, we make a decision on that. We've already decided not to take the money that was
set aside. This is different than that. It’s not meant as an end-around the spending cap. We need
containers to hold money for funds that may cross budget years. It’s just that simple and the pension
obligations are something that isn’t calculated exactly for the next 20 something years which is what our
obligation is so to the extent that we do or do not fund this, that’s up to the Board of Aldermen but the
mechanism itself to me is right out there, it's a container. | would urge those that don’t even want a
container to come up with an alternative. We went through an entire budget season and there was one
budget cut recommended and it was my colleague, Alderman Schoneman, it was for $60,000 for the
Legacy Playground carousel. We passed the budget with that included so that is not much of a dent for
what we are talking about here. Please, if you have an idea how it is that we are to save the money and
what mechanism we will use to save the money to pay the $2.5 million bullet which will face us that we
know about, please, I’m all ears and |’m sure the rest of my colleagues will be also.
Alderman Schoneman
The budget that we recently passed went through with really no expansion other than for raises that
exceeded the spending cap. That’s why this is necessary. If there was no spending cap there would be
no need for a bucket so clearly this is in response to the fact that a spending cap exists. The money was
spent on were for raises that exceeded that spending cap number. If we hadn’t exceeded the cap
number then we wouldn't be in the jam that we are in. | would suggest that the way that we manage
these budgets is by keeping individual expenses with the cap. That way when the budget comes
around, the overall budget can be under the cap as well. That’s my suggestion.
