Board of Aldermen Page 8
April 26, 2016
A Viva Voce Roll Call was taken, which resulted as follows:
Yea: Alderman Wilshire, Alderman Clemons, Alderman Cookson, 14
Alderman Dowd, Alderman Caron, Alderman Siegel,
Alderman Schoneman, Alderwoman Melizzi-Golja,
Alderman McGuinness, Alderman LeBrun, Alderman Moriarty,
Alderman O’Brien, Alderman Lopez, Alderman McCarthy
Nay: 0
MOTION CARRIED
R-16-015
Endorsers: Mayor Jim Donchess
Alderman Ken Siegel
Alderman-at-Large Brian S. McCarthy
Alderman-at-Large Lori Wilshire
Alderman Richard A. Dowd
Alderman June M. Caron
Alderman-at-Large Michael B. O’Brien, Sr.
ESTABLISHING AN EXPENDABLE TRUST FUND FOR STATE EMPLOYER PENSION COSTS
AND APPROPRIATING $2,230,000 FROM FUND BALANCE ASSIGNED FOR THIS PURPOSE
INTO THE EXPENDABLE TRUST FUND
Given its third reading;
MOTION BY ALDERMAN SIEGEL FOR FINAL PASSAGE OF R-16-015 BY ROLL CALL
ON THE QUESTION
Alderman Siegel
Here we are again, | appreciate the curtesy from the last meeting and unfortunately it was somewhat awkward.
| was thinking of myself of something like Prometheus bound where an eagle was going to come and peck my
liver out. Mr. Teeboom isn’t here so | will use a different analogy and perhaps | am Sisyphus rolling a stone up
the hill. | am going to break this down so everyone gets my perspective on this because we’ve been given a
lot of different perspectives and why | came up with this legislation and the thinking behind it. It’s no secret that
we have the state obligation and we needed some way to get to it in such a way that is constructive. So we
had this money set aside and at the last term the Mayor tried to construct some legislation which would allow
us to transfer similar to what we are doing now but there were a couple of flaws which prevented me from
supporting that legislation. The first flaw was that expendable trust fund had no lapse point so to me it was a
side door forever until our obligation was satisfied. Once that $2.3 million went away, and that’s the $2.3
million that has no effect on the taxpayer burden which | believe is the point of the spending cap. The last term
that burden, once that $2.3 million which was set aside for this purpose, went away then the burden was
change and | couldn’t support that. The other thing was that there was no notion of trying to solve the problem
which is ultimately the state pushing down the obligations to us and so there was no sense of okay we are
going to give ourselves a certain amount of time to solve the problem and it’s going to be finite and if we can’t
at the state level then we have to swallow our medicine and follow a different path. | spent a lot of time
thinking about this legislation because I’m concerned about the effect on the city. I’m not going to say the
world is going to fall apart but | think we are going to have real problems. Again, the money was set aside for a
purpose. You say to yourself what do | do if | set money aside for a purpose and there is no way to move it
across. That to me is more a flaw in the way that our spending cap is constructed. | am for the spending cap
but one of the ways that it is constructed is if you transfer money across you don’t legislatively have the
opportunity to say okay well | want this money to be used to this purpose but | want to still pin the cap number
at the same level. If | could have done that in this legislation | would have. That’s a flaw in the mechanisms by
