Crunching Numbers In The City Budget

Where can the City Council cut the budget and maintain an increase in education spending? City fiscal watchdog John Marshall Lee, who regularly attends city budget sessions, identifies these areas in a commentary:

$7 Million for education can be found. You just have to look through the City reports with a WATCHDOG eye and nose to find the money. By the numbers:

$3.5 Million in 66 positions with another $1 Million of benefits attached that were vacant and funded in the current year, 2012. There are three months left so there is a million to be saved that hasn’t yet gone to slush as Council leadership understands.

Since we are looking to next year for the tax increase (rather than this year when padding rather than cutting is displayed) then look at the 80 positions in the 2013 budget with a similar $4.5 Million price tag.

That brings us to $5.5 Million available for education.

Now let’s look at the current and proposed police overtime calculations, a real close look and that is hard to do. The Mayor lets the City know in a January report showing 7 months of expenses that an estimate of $5,800,000 at the outset of the 2012 budget is projected to be inadequate by $2,750,000 “based on eight months actual expenditure of $5,622,062, then projected for the remaining four months of the fiscal year.”

Isn’t it a bit unusual to be able to report on the eighth month of the fiscal year in the seventh month report? Is that a superior form of accountability by Mayor Finch bordering on prophecy? Who is accountable for overtime? Is it the Police Commission? I understand that is not on their TO DO LIST, and they do not get reports on this. If that is true, then is the WATCHDOG for the Police overtime in the Mayor’s office? Is this another example of Finch ACCOUNTABILITY?

What to do? How about a simple report to the taxpayer, Mayor Finch? First try to capture the reasons for a 50% overrun on OT. Are officers sick? What’s the cause?

Next, please indicate where the OT has occurred. Patrol? Special Events? Administration? And is any of this reimbursable? By the ranks, who is earning the various slices of overtime?

By now it is clear the City Council members are drowning in the fiscal pool. And unless they get serious rapidly and call upon the Charter Revision Commission for a Financial Board to assist them, we may be heading for another State group with a Financial Review Board. The community may not begrudge providing tax dollars for education, but they will wish the “slush funds” to cease immediately. As well as an OT system where no one is accountable. If overtime is running at $700-800,000 per month this problem could have been observed earlier and adjustments other than to cop to a deficit considered. Could this be part of labor negotiations that are not yet settled with the PD?

Give me a summary number! The current budget scatters the OT among 6 line items and 10 divisions. Hard to monitor for even an accountable Mayor. Perhaps there is $1.25 Million available? After all, his Budget talk declares he “cuts” first. Time to get the knife out, perhaps.

Finally, all of this indicates the “unaccountability” of City fiscal reporting, and fiscal watchdog structure. In the first place the January report showing the rapid decline to projected year-end deficit was available in the last week of February, but the Budget and Appropriations Committee missed their March meeting. When do you think they will look at this turn of events??? Secondly, and of significance, is the fact our monthly reports never indicate last year’s actual expenses (or revenues) in the same month or at the same point in the fiscal year as the previous year. Why NOT? That variance is an important measure. How does this show the Mayor to be a practitioner of “budget transparency?” How is avoiding such reporting by the City Council that can ask for a different format per Chapter 9, Section 7 of the current City Charter, using their POWER? Isn’t it sad this Council is more used to trying to protect their “current powers” from any change by the Charter Revision Commission than using their “current powers” for the benefit of the taxpayers???

There are other expense “cuts” that can be made (for 2012 and 2013) and should be made. Where are the WATCHDOGS? Time will tell.