Board of Aldermen 12-11-2018 Page 26
President Wilshire
You don’t have to cry.
Alderman Jette
The people who spoke | know most of them, they are my friends and | was not against this, but |
promised the voters in my Ward that | would vote the way they voted, they voted against this. But the
majority of the City voted for it not by much but they did vote for it. But what they voted for was a
resolution that has words in it and that resolution included the requirement that the $4 million be raised
before any money would be borrowed or the thing would go forward, except for the cost of acquiring the
building. There was pressure there because the building was for sale and we didn’t want to lose out on
acquiring that building and also for maintaining that building.
Certainly people can assume that when people voted for this they meant go forward with this project but
that’s not what the resolution says. I’m not going to substitute what | think people thought, | read the
resolution that’s what they voted for and | think that’s what we are stuck with. | understand the reasons
for wanting to hire an architect and come up with a plan, | don’t disagree with the soundness of that
idea. But there is a way, | think, of doing that without violating the trust that the voters put in us when
they assumed that we were going to do what the resolution said.
One way is that we are going to have a special election, we can ask the voters to give their opinion
again and | think as this thing has been moving along, everybody seems to think it has gained
momentum and that people have come around and we have a chance to hear what the voters have to
say by adding this to the ballot when the special election occurs. Another way of doing this is
separately hiring the architect, it doesn’t have to be part of this $15.5 million, this resolution. Back in
September the Mayor met with us and at least the Budget Review Committee and told us he was
projecting an $8.5 million dollar surplus from last year. He asked us to set aside $2.5 million in escrows
for various projects which were not part of last year’s budget. So there is $8.5 million | think, at least
$2.5 million that could be allocated, I’ve heard a ballpark for this architect would be $1 million. So |
think we could authorize the spending of $1 million dollars without violating the resolution that the voters
voted for. Sol am going to vote against this resolution.
Alderman Klee
Thank you very much Alderman Jette. | understand what you are saying, but | have this gut feeling that
if we spend outside of the bond, outside of the resolution and used found money or surplus money of
$1 million dollars, where does that slippery slope end? We are telling the tax payers that we are going
to spend within the bond, that we are going to do this. It has been brought out that it is actually going to
cost us more from people in the audience, particularly ex Alderman Teeboom who feels that it is going
to cost more. If we start spending bits and pieces outside of the bond | think we are kind, we are just
not being as honest and transparent as I'd like to be. | would prefer to stay within the bond.
Also, putting it on the ballot while that sounds like a good idea and | think giving the voters as much
voice as possible is a wonderful idea; it is just going to delay it all that more. Then we have to change
the 2/20 date that we get the $4 million dollars to another and again we are making major changes to
this resolution. And it also means more cost because as the time goes by the tariffs will increase the
cost of steel and so on, so ultimately, | think we are going to be doing a disservice to the tax payers and
actually asking for more money down the road. | would prefer to stay within the resolution of the bond. |
don’t think the change that we are asking to make is anything extraordinary, | stated before, sometimes
we make mistake and we need to own the mistake and we need to try to rectify it if we can. I’m not
saying that every mistake has to be fixed; but as we did with the sick leave and so on.
| think that we just need to fix this. | think this is fair, lve spoken to many people about making sure
that we continue to have a milestone; | think we are keeping the milestone, the $4 million dollars still
has to earned or however you want to say it, donated, have on the books more or less by 2/2020. |
