Board of Aldermen — 3/21/17 Page 20
O-17-031
Endorsers: Mayor Jim Donchess
Alderman Richard A. Dowd
Alderman Ben Clemons
Alderman-at-Large Lori Wilshire
Alderman June M. Caron
Alderwoman Mary Ann Melizzi-Golja
Alderman-at-Large Michael B. O’Brien, Sr.
RELATIVE TO THE WASTEWATER SYSTEM FUND AS A SEWER FUND
Given its second reading;
MOTION BY ALDERMAN DOWD FOR FINAL PASSAGE OF O-17-031
ON THE QUESTION
Alderman Schoneman
| distributed this evening a copy of a proposed amendment which actually was distributed by email yesterday.
The text of that proposed amendment is at the bottom of page two, and we'll get to that in just a moment. | want
to start with commenting on some of the public comment we heard tonight. Based on what we heard | think
there are a lot of issues with this proposed ordinance. The Spending Cap piece that | was most concerned with
is only a piece of it.
Public Works Commissioner Pappas spoke about shared employees. Apparently there are a number; she had
a long list of people who are shared, some portion of their salary is in one department, another portion is in this
fund that would be moved out. The percentages vary from % to full or whatever it was. There wasn't just a
couple of employees. It sounded like there was a lot. To me, | don’t see how we can have half an employee
outside the budget and half inside. What Mrs. Pappas pointed out, as | think as a possibility for future abuse, it
could happen, or future use, would be to start moving those percentages around in and out of the budget to
accomplish a savings in the budget to allow more spending and then transfer this outside. | don’t’ know that we
have a way to really account for the hours that are spent. My understanding is that there are some folks whose
time is not specifically shared in the budget but they perform duties inside. For instance, a wastewater
employee might possibly drive a plow truck for the city and plow city streets. | think that poses a problem. |
don’t’ want to see that potential abuse. Also, if we were to use that in the future, to move employees out or
move whatever else out into that other department because it’s still just a department as part of public works,
are we saving money in the budget and then forcing the sewer rate up higher and higher? It seems to me that
there’s that possibility. A possibility could exist. I’m very concerned about that. | think that’s a problem that we
have to take a very close look at.
Secondly, Mr. Teeboom talked about the AAA rating. | think that’s great that we got that AAA rating. One of the
things that he said, he quoted, he said spending is discipline, and the Spending Cap is strongly adhered to. A
strong discipline, strongly adhered to. Those are my notes, maybe that wasn’t his exact quote but we got our
AAA rating because we have a procedure in place for handling budget problems and we follow it. That’s what
they are saying. If we start playing with that, do we jeopardize our AAA rating? Maybe, maybe not. But if it
were known that we were doing things like this, and someone says we have a Spending Cap process that is
strictly adhered to and that our spending is disciplined. I’m not sure they would draw that conclusion.
We heard from a couple of other people. The third gentleman, | forgot his name, and from Mr. Sullivan. Both
spoke about the tax rate and about the effect that this can have. | think reasonable tax rates are usually seen
as reasonable by those who maybe aren’t paying them or aren’t’ paying the tax, aren’t paying the cost. We all
pay our tax rate. But if we are going to be doing spending, in my mind going outside of a process that rightly as
| said before has a higher threshold of ten votes, and as was pointed out by the speakers, are we really ending
up with a reasonable tax rate? | think the reasonable thing to do is to follow the process, have faith in the
process. | said before that although spending is very, very important, | think it is very important to Ward 3 tax
