Board of Aldermen Page 9
April 26, 2016
which the Charter reads right now. It is what it is but | still felt that this is something that is worth doing. We
have the money and | don’t think anyone that | have spoken to feels that the money wasn’t set aside; nobody
has said if we spend that money it’s going to have an effect such as that our bond rating will change. | am
going through each of the elements hopefully describing what | might view as the possible problems and how
to address those objections. We have this pool and we can use it but we won’t because we have this flaw in
the way the spending cap works. So if we decide to move it over we have this perceived problem that we
bump the cap number. We haven’t bumped what we are spending; we’ve bumped a virtual number. Imagine
the case where you wake up and you say to yourself, oh, low and behold, Visa has raised my spending limit. |
believe we are all relatively prudent and the fact that Visa allowed you a different number doesn’t mean that
you go out and spend the money. | certainly wouldn’t and | suspect that most people wouldn't. You didn’t ask
them to raise that number it just happened and that’s the way | view this. Again, the good part of saving that
money for the purpose can’t be satisfied because of this impediment due to a flaw in the legislation. We have
this problem and it seems to me that the people | have spoken to, this is the main sticking point; that somehow
this number goes up and what do we do about this virtual number going up? | would say to all of you in the
horseshoe that | don’t remember at what point we abdicated our ability or responsibility to make decisions that
were of sound fiscal decisions. We did that in a couple of terms, several of my colleagues that were on the
Board at the time rattled off a series of amendments or motions where we_ took the existing budget and
restored the POP unit and the principals and we still cut the budget by $550,000, again, acting responsibly and
prudently doing our homework. We still have that opportunity; | don’t think that anyone is any less talented in
this term to be able to do that. When | first discussed this legislation with Mayor Donchess | specifically said
this is not an enabling piece of legislation to allow us to run wild with spending so one of the consequences of
that, as much as | admire NFR and what they said is absolutely true, that doesn’t fit within the constraints of
this situation that we find ourselves in and that’s why | won’t support this because again, if | am going to
support a philosophy of changing this number and using that money to address a state mandated burden on us
| can’t then turn around and say we have more flexibility to do something we shouldn't be doing. It’s sad and |
wish we were not in this position but there we are. | don’t have any other solutions for this problem that we
face. We have the money set aside but we are artificially deciding that we aren’t going to use it and it is
artificial. The reason for some of this range from an understandable concern about the spending cap number
to flat out political posturing; I’ll be blunt, like oh good, | get to waive the flag of fiscal responsibility and yet be
inconsistent in some other issues and that’s going to potentially happen and that’s disappointing. Ultimately
you're out-of-pocket is exactly the same whether we vote for this or not except | walk out of the grocery store
with one less bag of groceries for the money that | have available in a sense. We do not have the ability to say
okay I’m going to use it for a different purpose, it’s in a pool and it’s stuck there. So, are you actually doing
taxpayer any good by creating the exact same burden no matter which way you vote but one way you vote is
going to cause some issues. The city is not going to fall apart but it will be demonstratively diminished in my
mind because it’s a fairly large number and that’s the argument that | have. It’s all well and good to play hero
but | think it’s my job to be brutally pragmatic no matter what the consequence is in a certain sense. | don't
personally care about higher office or any of that nonsense, that’s not my game here, | care about the city and |
do care about the spending cap and this does not affect the taxpayer burden. | appreciate your
accommodating my long-winded explanation.
Alderman Schoneman
| appreciate the arguments in favor and certainly Alderman Siegel does his homework all of the time.
Regarding the legislation that came up last term when Mayor Lozeau suggested it, the amount she wanted to
move was $2.7 million and this year it’s $2.23 million. That’s a reduction of $470,000 and | presume that went
to the purpose for the funds were earmarked which is to pay this excess burden, the pension fund liability that
the state has put upon us without effecting the tax rate. If this fund does not move the tax rate still will not be
affected and the money can still be spent just like it was last year; to take the balance from $2.7 million down to
$2.2 million. | asked Mr. Griffin what the amount of money for this year for the additional pension funding was
going to be. It looks like it’s going to be approximately $350,000. That’s a $350,000 problem with a $2.2
million solution. | don’t think that we need to move this money, which it really is an appropriation and while it’s
acknowledged that this does up the limit and theoretically we don’t have to spend to that limit, the likelinood is
that we are going to and it’s practically already spent. If we were to take the budget from last year and assume
