Special Board of Aldermen 6-13-2022 Page 7
years.
Alderman Clemons
So what | am coming to the understanding here is that we are this Fiscal Year ’23 we have $113 million under the
spending cap. It seems to me that if we don’t receive a significant sum of grants in the next year or before July 2023
that we could be in trouble?
The other question | have is around the same lines and that’s for the Enterprise Funds. If we see an uptick in
revenue, we can only spend — we can take the revenue in but we can only spend a portion of it out, correct?
Steve Bolton, Corporation Counsel
You could run into that issue. | mean you’ve got a significant gap here between the limit on total expenditure and the
amount of this proposed budget. | guess | didn’t understand you before saying that if we don’t by June 30 get a large
number of grants we’re in trouble because | don’t see that.
Alderman Clemons
Well here’s my question. Rather than talk about grants, let’s talk about the revenue fund. So as we all know, the
sewer system has continually plagued us with different - especially the overflow — has plagued us for years on having
to raise the rates for example so we can pay for projects. Are we constrained with how much we can raise the rates
because we are constrained with how much we can spend the following year on any particular project because of the
spending cap?
Steve Bolton, Corporation Counsel
Capital expenditures can be excluded.
Alderman Clemons
Okay. So they would have to be excluded and that would take a vote of ten Aldermen?
Steve Bolton, Corporation Counsel
Right but you never constrained on raising the rates. | mean your constrain is what you think is prudent and what you
think your constituents would be agreeable to. So the revenue side there’s no cap on the revenue side. The cap is on
the expenditure side.
Alderman Clemons
| guess my point is though is that if we are constrained on the spending side of it, you would only raise rates if you
thought you were going to do some big project or something you were anticipating in the future but if you don’t have
ten Aldermen come to agree to do that to exclude that out of the spending cap calculation, you probably wouldn’t want
to raise rates anyway. | don’t know. These are the conversations that come back with having the spending cap the
way that the State has decided that we must apply it. | agree with the Mayor and | agree with what Alderman Sullivan
was saying which is that it doesn’t make sense to have these calculations in there and | think the Ordinances we had
in place before were us recognizing or the Board of Aldermen recognizing that the Charter language is too strict and
too harsh. I’ve always felt that way as an Alderman. | always thought it was ridiculous that - and there have been
cases, there have been instances when I’ve been on this Board of Aldermen when we have received $500,000, $1
million and it can’t be spent because we're up against the spending cap, especially in those low inflation years. It’s
probably not going to be an issue in the next coming years but it happens. I’ve seen it happen. | think it’s something
that we need to think about how we want our Charter to read in the future. | don’t necessarily mind the spending cap
that or spend some kind of — | don’t really like the spending cap to be honest with you but if there is a spending cap,
we really need to think about not including grants and enterprise funds.
Steve Bolton, Corporation Counsel
If you are asking me if | think it makes perfect sense, I’ve never said it makes perfect sense. If you are asking me if |
think it could be better written, yeah | do.
