The Skinny on New Albany's Season from Hell
What I know, or what I think I know, about the city's budgetary nightmare comes exclusively from the mayor's briefing to the City Council on Thursday night.
My numbers are rough approximations and your city council representative should be able to fill you in on the exact figures. All concerned are frustrated, including the mayor, but the council members are showing a lot of maturity now that they are no longer whining about it. Clearly, a budget workshop is a requirement sometime before summer, while CM Coffey is renewing his call for a $100,000 financial audit (my word, not his).
My impression is that an audit is not required. The numbers are readily available to the legislative body and the mayor urged council members to contact him immediately if they have any problem gaining access to the facts from the city controller's office. While no one seems to be dissatisfied with Kay Garry's work, the mayor showed admirable foresight in putting his own credibility on the line to assure council that nothing is being hidden from them. That's the proactive leader we've been looking for.
Obviously, the mayor's full-time job is to manage the city's affairs, particularly the financial management, but it's heartening to see how strong a grasp of the situation he has. No one can fault the mayor as lacking knowledge of the facts, and last night's masterful briefing should go a long way toward giving the council a "comfort level" with the budgetary constraints.
Alas, even the mayor and controller are stymied by the state's tardiness in reporting its audits for the years 2002 and 2003. Even the full-timers are seeing through a glass darkly, so it's no wonder the council members are frustrated and confused.
I want to be there when the state's agent meets with council to explain the lay of the land and the implications of the budget crisis. That workshop should be a doozy.
So, here's the skinny.
The city's annual budget hovers between $16 and $18 million per year. About one-sixth of that annual amount will, essentially, be stripped from the city during the current fiscal year. Part of the "strip" is a penalty for overspending (the money borrowed from the Sewer Board and spent) and failing to make timely repayment of the loan. Although the cash loan has been repaid, the city wound up spending in the neighborhood of $18 to $20 million in the wrong year and now must drop back to about $13 million.
None of those figures are exact, but you get the idea. The precise hit, according to the mayor, will be somewhere between $2.7 and $3.1 million and until the state reports the true approved budget, the mayor is being extremely careful with all spending and the City Council has basically frozen all appropriations.
The good news? By the end of April, the picture should clear up and the city can reveal its spending priorities.
My numbers are rough approximations and your city council representative should be able to fill you in on the exact figures. All concerned are frustrated, including the mayor, but the council members are showing a lot of maturity now that they are no longer whining about it. Clearly, a budget workshop is a requirement sometime before summer, while CM Coffey is renewing his call for a $100,000 financial audit (my word, not his).
My impression is that an audit is not required. The numbers are readily available to the legislative body and the mayor urged council members to contact him immediately if they have any problem gaining access to the facts from the city controller's office. While no one seems to be dissatisfied with Kay Garry's work, the mayor showed admirable foresight in putting his own credibility on the line to assure council that nothing is being hidden from them. That's the proactive leader we've been looking for.
Obviously, the mayor's full-time job is to manage the city's affairs, particularly the financial management, but it's heartening to see how strong a grasp of the situation he has. No one can fault the mayor as lacking knowledge of the facts, and last night's masterful briefing should go a long way toward giving the council a "comfort level" with the budgetary constraints.
Alas, even the mayor and controller are stymied by the state's tardiness in reporting its audits for the years 2002 and 2003. Even the full-timers are seeing through a glass darkly, so it's no wonder the council members are frustrated and confused.
I want to be there when the state's agent meets with council to explain the lay of the land and the implications of the budget crisis. That workshop should be a doozy.
So, here's the skinny.
The city's annual budget hovers between $16 and $18 million per year. About one-sixth of that annual amount will, essentially, be stripped from the city during the current fiscal year. Part of the "strip" is a penalty for overspending (the money borrowed from the Sewer Board and spent) and failing to make timely repayment of the loan. Although the cash loan has been repaid, the city wound up spending in the neighborhood of $18 to $20 million in the wrong year and now must drop back to about $13 million.
None of those figures are exact, but you get the idea. The precise hit, according to the mayor, will be somewhere between $2.7 and $3.1 million and until the state reports the true approved budget, the mayor is being extremely careful with all spending and the City Council has basically frozen all appropriations.
The good news? By the end of April, the picture should clear up and the city can reveal its spending priorities.
posted by All4Word at 7:02 PM
1 Comments:
Bet this will be the stopper in our pusuit of a code enforcement officer. The neighborhood associations are going to wind up having to do this ourselves. Anybody taking odds on this one?
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