Board of Aldermen Page 8
May 24, 2016
problems.
A Viva Voce Roll Call was taken, which resulted as follows:
Yea: Alderman Wilshire, Alderman Clemons, Alderman Cookson, 13
Alderman Dowd, Alderman Caron, Alderman Siegel,
Alderman Schoneman, Alderwoman Melizzi-Golja, Alderman McGuinness,
Alderman LeBrun, Alderman O’Brien, Alderman Lopez,
Alderman McCarthy
Nay: Alderman Moriarty 1
MOTION CARRIED
MOTION BY ALDERMAN SIEGEL FOR FINAL PASSAGE OF R-16-015 AS AMENDED BY ROLL
CALL
ON THE QUESTION
Alderman Siegel
Let me deal with some of the issues that were raised both in the Budget Review Committee and just
recently in public comment. This idea that this money is something that is already accounted for; on its
surface one could say yes, we have a budget in front of us but you have to look and see what happened
in order to make that happen. | would particularly like to focus on the Capital Equipment Reserve Fund
which has been hacked down by $700,000. So, yes, we made a budget but what we are doing is playing
a dangerous game of kick the can. We can play that game, for that matter why not just have no Capital
Equipment Reserve Fund amount. At a certain point there is a threshold by which we are cutting our
own throat. You can bleed out from a little razor cuts just as well as you can bleed out from just slicing
your aorta. | believe that this is a fairly significant problem so with the money | am going to propose
eventually that we help to restore our Capital Equipment Reserve Fund because we cannot allow the
maintenance work in this city that our reserve funds to go down to the point where we are not replacing
our equipment. It is a fallacy that this has been accounted for or that there is some ulterior motive, in
fact, | am specifically going out of my way to demonstrate that this has absolutely nothing to do with the
desire to expand the spending cap. If the amount was $100,000 or $1 million then that would be the
amount. It is the exact amount specified by CFO Griffin and in fact, we have an estimate for years two
and three that we are going to have a $2 million additional pension problem. Clearly, we aren’t going to
solve that with any existing money in the fund; we can solve it partially but not completely so there will be
other changes and again, when the time comes which is in Budget not before this committee, | will try to
make some suggestions which hopefully can constructively address that problem. This is not about
playing some weird fiscal game. Frankly, | think it’s a flaw in the spending cap legislation the way it was
crafted that we have this expansion, for example, you can’t level fund a budget and say I’m going to take
from this account and move it here and have the same amount of money but now you need 10 votes to
do that. | was never quoted as having any desire to override the spending cap and my reference to
Prometheus has to do with the agony involved in trying to get a budget through and the feeling that we
have revisited this before. While Mr. Teeboom would like to classify himself as the eagle that pecks out
my liver, | would not discredit the eagle with that analogy because that is not what | had in mind,
unfortunately | don’t believe that there is any other bird that | can think of and be in polite company but
he is not who | was referring to. | certainly didn’t refer to myself as Prometheus, the giver of fire to the
humans which is what he really was; sorry to correct you on that. Nonetheless, getting back to the
legislation, | believe this is important to pass because this is a real problem. Again, we have this issue in
the budget; it’s a very clear hole. I’m not looking to put this into random areas, for example, beautifying
the city, additional salaries; | was very explicit in this legislation. It was there to plug the pension hole.
