On a night the City Council set the tax rate at 41.85 mils, representing an approximate $125 increase on the average city homeowner, city fiscal watchdog John Marshall Lee addressed the city’s budget and legislative body with a lot of financial questions:
Tonight we are near the final scene of Bridgeport’s Annual Budget Pageant that features many long meetings for the Budget & Appropriations Committee that blend fellowship and food while you receive guidance and counsel from the folks who put the spending plan together. So it is not a 6% tax increase, but it is a tax increase after all, but can you tell me:
• What will happen in the next year when or if $2 Million of union concessions do not happen? Is there a ‘rainy day fund’ to raid?
• Has the “minimum budget requirement” education issue been settled such that the City can duck the additional $3.3 Million the State expected as recently as March 2013?
• Where does the annual review and vote on the Capital Budget stand? And where on the City web site is a schedule of all of the projects presented to the taxpaying public in the past five years and more that are short of completion?
• When will you begin receiving complete monthly financial reports as provided in the Charter, with full and accurate variance information? The March monthly was not available as of Friday May 31, 2013. But it was in your box today. Are you embarrassed? It projects a $2.5 Million deficit. Are you concerned?
• What has happened to the Stipend issue in the past year? What is the public getting for providing $9,000 to reimburse expenses for you? Are you ready to go public, yet? If not, why not? When you travel out of town where is the proof to the community that it is not about partying and good times? You provide no evidence of your learning, while you are spending the money of the taxpayers.
• Have you reviewed our Charter procedures recently, especially those around handling public funds? There are existing violations I have reported and they continue to exist. Have you decided to ignore my comments? Perhaps you discuss them in caucus? Maybe you have asked the City Attorney to provide you assurance that you are still law abiding? However, do you feel you are meeting the expectations of the public? Are you waiting for the elections in the fall to find how the public will answer these questions?
• If I were to report the budget book you just reviewed differs in material and significant aspects from information provided in monthly reports, Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports and other City financial sources, would it surprise you? Does it matter to you? Do you genuinely think you are representing the voters and taxpayers of this City? One or more of you claim to have heard the public outcry this year, but failing to change your operating methods makes you guilty of failing in your Council work.
Finally, why do you continue to allow your Committee process to be stampeded when pressed to come to decisions without public input? Last week’s Memorandum regarding Pension B Police and Fire Trustees was such an example. Millions of dollars released from City retiree pension funds to go to the State but no projections or actuarial data available to Council persons interested enough to attend and inquire of the Contracts Committee? Three actuarial reports written from different perspectives and with differing assumptions, each one of them paid for with funds from Connecticut taxpayers. But they are not part of your due diligence. Strange? You bet.
“Don’t worry,” seemed to be the counsel of the City Attorney, who while admitting he has no actuarial or investment expertise, still was reassuring your fellow members that restating the power to tax the public while releasing no info about the current decision, was really about making Trustees feel better about not getting sued as stewards. Trust is not a word the public uses today with respect to the way the City works. Does that bother you? Time will tell.
All good questions which will likely go unanswered.
The bell has been rung. It cannot be unrung. Now these worthy questions must be presented to the brain-dead registered voters who do not vote yet shout loudly about the fiscal mismanagement that dooms us to our present state.
Memo to the people of Black Rock. If you do not vote Sue Brannelly out of office then you are getting what you deserve. Has there been a bigger Kool-Aid drinker than Sue Brannelly? She has pushed this fake budget through the council with little regard for the taxpayer or for the lower-tiered city employees.
So Brannelly thinks it’s okay for the upper-tiered employees to get raises in tough economic times. Wonderful!!!
The state is going to give us more money than expected but Brannelly still wants the lower-tiered employee to give the city more concessions. What nerve.
Hey Sue, you and the other lemmings on the B & A hardly cut anything from the budget. Let’s do this before we screw the lower-tiered employee.
1. Take away the council stipend, that would save $180K.
2. Let’s eliminate your brother-in-law’s do-nothing job in labor relations.
3. Let’s eliminate the money spent on food by all departments.
4. Let’s review a certain restaurant’s bills and see if certain high-ranking city employee bar tabs are not written into these bills.
5. Take the extra money from the state and use it in the budget to stop city givebacks.
Some people will say I am picking on you and maybe they are right but it’s you who has acted like you are the Queen of Bridgeport and what you say is law.
Sue, you are part of something that is so disgusting and false it amazes me. Last night none of the city employees showed up at the council meeting. Wow, what a bunch of gutless bastards.
Sue, you forgot, the people put you in office and the people can vote you out of office. Good Bye.
Councilwoman Michelle Lyons, D-134, one of only two members to vote against the budget in May and the new mil rate Monday, said if the state provides more money to Bridgeport than anticipated, “It would be nice to give a lower (tax) rate to the taxpayers and ask less concessions of the unions.”
But Councilwoman Susan Brannelly, D-130, a budget committee chairman, said the more realistic outcome is the extra money would go into the city’s general fund.
“We had a tax increase, (so) if we think we can get what we’re still asking for (in concessions), we’re not backing down from that,” she said.
Read more:
www .ctpost.com/local/article/Bridgeport-council-sets-tax-rate-4572924.php
www .youtube.com/watch?v=QRGLjzFHa40
She is awful.
Sue Brannelly has been on the B&A for several budget cycles and prides herself on attending meetings, keeping track of information and being more informed about City finances than many other Council members. Unfortunately, that is not a very high standard of fiscal responsibility.
Instead of speculating about what may or may not be excess state funds to the City in the coming year, my own request to Councilperson Brannelly would be to explain why she has been silent on the City Finance sleight-of-hand that identified over $4 Million of vacant positions, what we called “ghost positions” for two years to the CC, but that Sue and other members voted for one year ago. Three months into the year the positions were stricken, with no notes regarding the variances in many departments, and no comments in the minutes of B&A. Are you taking care of public business, Sue?
The Mayor has talked about his success in dealing with the City unions. But did he talk specifically about the deals made with Police and Fire at any point with the public? I can’t remember him telling us public safety people will now have a reasonable chance of doubling their retirement income through the CMERS plan. Who ends up paying for the rapid accumulation of an obligation that will last for decades? What do those projections look like? When does the City Council get a look at the numbers?
And when the City Council came to their Council seats last night (those who did), the March report was waiting for them. If you flipped to the Police and Fire departments and looked for overtime numbers you saw chaos and mismanagement in large red numbers!!! Take a look at budgeted OT approved by CC at $7.7 million, a large number. Through nine months reported it looks like we will spend an additional $5.4 Million. Who is minding the store? Where are the WATCHDOGS? Why aren’t they barking? With all of the late hours and feasting accomplished during budget meetings do they sleep for the rest of the budget year? How do you train watchdogs? Ideas from OIB? Time will tell.
*** Questions with “little or no” answers in the end are like bumps on a log or sand through an hourglass, so are the days of their lives! *** WHY? ***