The Budget, Bridgeport And Broadway

Good theatrics make a point. City fiscal watchdog John Marshall Lee recently pulled out red rubber boots to make a point at public hearings regarding the city budget, the “symbolic representation of our sinking or all wet financial condition.” In the final public hearing on the budget, Lee commends councilors for scheduling four opportunities for the public to speak with a reminder to keep taxpayers afloat. From Lee:

Budget time in Bridgeport approaches theater sometimes. Actors and audience, an offstage chorus from Hartford, writers and directors from City Hall, and this year you have hired a coach to assist your performance.

I commend you for providing four public budget hearings, allowing taxpayers an open mike opportunity, three minutes at a time, to share facts and feelings with you. One night was standing room only, while the curtain closed within 30 minutes on other nights with only a few of us in the audience or at the mike.

One of the sessions focused on the Capital Budget where the Charter directs you to solicit opinions. Your promotion of this solicitation is very weak. I heard you in session refer to the Capital process as building a “wish list.” Do your constituents know their wishes are important? Had you directly informed the NRZ groups in the City would you have heard about their longer term dreams and plans?

Where is the current “wish list” showing all of the projects Council has authorized of late that have not been funded? And where is the list of those projects that have been funded in the past five years and where those projects stand? Would such lists be helpful to anyone in understanding of our bonding position?

Relative to the Operating Budget it’s the first time many of you have faced “Bridgeport budget Showtime!” The budget book has lots of lines to learn, and it requires watchdogs to view the departments all year long. How do you plan to do that? Will you look for full-time employees to show up on monthly financial reports? Or department service indicators to appear on City website so you can monitor them visually each month?

If the revenues from Hartford stand up to OPM projections in 2017FY (last year they were projected too high, in error, and expenses, too low, in error) and the locally produced Police and Fire Department numbers are reviewed, regrouped and totaled as honest and accurate, perhaps you can be the star of the show after cutting the City side some 5-6% and transferring millions into the BOE budget. Remember to add uncounted current fee revenue from parents to Lighthouse as income and reduce your legislative spending budget as well, if you do not plan to staff the City Council further. Revenue sharing with the BOE will produce more results, I predict, than the losses of employee time on the City side of the budget.

The “red rubber boots” are not costumes, but symbolic representation of our “sinking” or “all wet” financial condition. They are meant as a reminder of budget lines to be corrected, of expenses to be controlled, and of debt to be reduced. They are not “swashbuckling pirate” boots to be thought of as fiction. They are fact. Your actions are what count to taxpayers. Time will tell.