Thomas MacMillan Photo
After weeks of public meetings, the aldermanic Finance Committee agreed to slash $6 million from the mayor’s $476 million budget, but refused to make further cuts.
In a final vote Tuesday night, the Finance Committee approved an amendment by Mayor John DeStefano that cut $6 million from his original $476 million budget proposal for the fiscal year starting July 1.
East Rock Aldermen Justin Elicker and Roland Lemar teamed up to put forward amendments that would have slashed $1.5 million from the Board of Education and cut another $1.1 million from 13 different departments. But Elicker and Lemar couldn’t convince enough of their aldermanic colleagues to join them. Several of their amendments went down in a tied vote.
The committee voted to approve another amendment to the budget, one proposed on Monday by the mayor, and went on to recommend the amended budget to the full Board of Aldermen. The board will vote on it May 27.
The Independent was at City Hall providing live blow-by-blow coverage. Scroll down to read live-blogging on the meeting’s many surprises, including an illuminated budget-cutting hat (6:57 p.m.), and a crucial vote-deciding revelation that Aldermen Greg Morehead is not a member of the Finance Committee (7:53 p.m.). That shocker spelled doom for an amendment proposed by Aldermen Elicker and Lemar.
Tuesday’s budget approval by the Board of Aldermen’s Finance Committee was a milestone in a contentious budget season. It marks the end of weeks of committee meetings to discuss the mayor’s proposed budget.
The committee has heard from representatives of each city department, trying to claim their pieces of the pie (read about that here, here and here). And it’s heard from hundreds of angry taxpayers who showed up last month to blast the projected 8.8 percent tax hike called for in the budget.
Meanwhile, budget watchdog group New Haven Citizens Action Network (NHCAN) has been organizing opposition to the budget, including a 1,000-person petition that it tried to get the mayor to sign. The group has called for a 10 percent budget cut from every department.
Faced with mounting discontent about the tax hike, Mayor John DeStefano announced an amendment to the budget Monday that would cut $6 million in city services and half the tax increase to 4 percent.
When the Finance Committee met on Tuesday night, they first took up the mayor’s proposed amendment and then considered amendments from Lemar and Elicker.
Aldermen approved the mayor’s amendment, after a discussion of the controversial parking meter monetization deal, which would have sold off 25 years of future parking fee revenue for cash upfront.
Thanks to another amendment approved on Tuesday, the meter deal is no longer part of the proposed budget. But in its place is a $5 million dollar “place-holder” that the city will need to find a way to fill over the next several months.
Although a parking meter deal is still an option for filling that hole, aldermen sought to ensure that budget language did not commit the city to any such deal.
After the meeting, Board of Aldermen President Carl Goldfield said he thinks the monetization deal is dead, which will mean finding $5 million in hard cuts. That’s the reason that he couldn’t support the cuts proposed by Lemar and Elicker, Goldfield said.
Elicker (at left in photo) and Lemar (at right) proposed a budget amendment that would have cut between $60,000 and $120,000 from each of 13 city departments. They argued that the cuts are needed to reduce taxes. Their plan would have lowered the mill rate by 0.21 mill, according to a budget department staffer.
Goldfield argued strongly against the amendment. He said cuts already have to be made as part of a nebulous part of the budget called Innovation Based Budgeting, to find the money to cover not going forward with the monetization deal. The city can’t stand more cuts on top of that, he said.
The Elicker/Lemar amendment went down, in a tie vote. That was also the fate of their proposal to save $50,000 by cutting the state lobbyist position from Economic Development.
Elicker and Lemar might have found the extra vote to support their proposed amendments, but for the surprise revelation that Alderman Morehead is not on the Finance Committee. That was revealed during a vote on another Elicker/Lemar amendment, one that would have cut $1.5 million from the Board of Education (BOE) budget. The amendment would not have changed the bottom line on the BOE budget, since it would have taken the place of a $1.5 million BOE cut that was already in another part of the city budget.
Morehead, who had been sitting at the meeting table all night, and three other aldermen, voted with Elicker and Lemar to support the amendment. Then Goldfield, who was on the other side of the vote, announced that Morehead is not on the committee. Morehead stormed out.
After the meeting, Morehead explained. He said he sent a letter to Goldfield in March asking to be taken off the Finance Committee since its regular Wednesday night meetings conflicted with a prior engagement of his. But he never got a response from Goldfield and he continued to receive all the notices and emails about the Finance Committee. So assumed he was on the committee and continued to come to meetings as his schedule allowed.
Until the voting on Tuesday night.
“I was dumbfounded,” Morehead said. “And really upset.”
Morehead said he didn’t understand why Goldfield didn’t say anything to him when he (Morehead) sat at the table like a normal committee member. “Wouldn’t you say anything?”
Goldfield said after the meeting that he hadn’t needed to reply to Morehead’s resignation. By submitting the letter, Morehead resigned and that was that.
Elicker and Lemar had more success with other, smaller amendments they submitted on Tuesday. They were able to find support for a cut of $12,500 from the Board of Aldermen’s travel budget. They also got three policy amendments passed. Those amendments call for each department to submit a report every six month on car use and vehicle-associated cost-cutting, similar reports on cell phone use, and a call for a curtailing of unnecessary travel spending.
After the meeting, Lemar (pictured below post-gaming the meeting with Aldermen Darnell Goldson and Migdalia Castro) promised to re-submit amendments to the full Board of Aldermen, which will vote on the budget — as amended by the Finance Committee — on May 27. Lemar acknowledged that he has to work on building aldermanic support for more cuts by that date.
Live Blog
Live-blogging commences below. (Note: only text inside quotation marks is directly quoted; the rest is paraphrasing. Observations and comments are generally in brackets.)
6:04 p.m.: Aldermen are taking their seats.
6:05: Chairman Yusuf Shah calls the meeting to order. He’s reading the agenda. Shah is joined by Aldermen Maureen O’Sullivan-Best, Jorge Perez, Migdalia Castro, Bitsie Clark, Carl Goldfield, Stephanie Bauer, Justin Elicker, Greg Morehead, Roland Lemar, and Andrea-Jackson Brooks. There are ten or fifteen observers here in the aldermanic chamber, including several city staffers and a number of aldermen who are not on the committee.
6:07: Shah promises his phone won’t be confiscated this time (for ringing during the meeting, as it did last week).
6:08: Goldfield makes a motion to table item number one, regarding the property tax stabilization fund. Motion passes. Elicker and Castro vote “nay.”
Goldfield moves item two: general, capital, and special budgets.
Perez moves items on page 11 of the mayor’s amendment, which has to do with the capital budget.
Perez: We’re reducing the requests for capital projects by $17 million.
Elicker has a question about the structure of the meeting. He apologizes and says he’s new.
Shah interrupts: “You’re not new any more. You submitted an amendment that was late.”
Goldfield steps in to explain: We’re moving what was submitted by the mayor, originally. And we’re amending it to reflect the new amendment from the mayor, piece by piece. Right now, we’re just talking about capital budgets.
6:16: Perez: I’m making the amendment, but these ideas don’t come just from me. I’m just moving the ideas that reflect the will of the working groups. [The mayor’s amendment was the result of several aldermanic working groups meeting for days with the administration.]
Elicker says he wants to commend the people who worked on this. It’s appropriate to delay the school projects, he says. [The amendment delays construction on four school projects.]
Lemar expresses support for the $17 million cut to the capital budget. It doesn’t save us much this year, but it will have an impact next year, he says.
6:19: Perez: Each million we cut means $62,000 less we have to pay in the future.
Castro: What about our debt?
Perez: This budget has no deficit. We spend a lot on debt service. This budget cuts spending, which helps the debt service picture
6:22: Goldfield speaks on the school construction delays. He tells the story of a visit long ago to the old Lincoln-Bassett school. “It was just shocking.” The paint looked like it came from a mental institution 40 years ago. Now, it’s a beautiful school. What we’re doing here needs to be done (delaying schools), but there’s a cost: some kids continue to attend shoddy schools. “There will be a cost to this.”
6:24: The capital budget amendment passes unanimously.
6:25: Goldfield moves the amended appropriating ordinance. Perez seconds.
Goldfield: This reflects the cuts we made to departments in our working groups with the administration: $1.5 million from the Board of Ed, delayed police class, delayed fire class, no more mounted unit [What will happen to Marshmallow the police horse?], Tweed subsidy reduced, Shubert’s subsidy reduced too, and more.
Nixing the holiday tree on the Green will save $20,000. Severing TV connections to City Hall will save $672. Goldfield chuckles at that one. There’s also a reduction associated with delaying the parking meter monetization plan, as was proposed alongside the mayor’s amendment yesterday.
6:30: Goldfield says he’s also moving the revenues on the same page. The biggest two are PILOT payments from Ninth Square development project ($580,000), Water Pollution Control Authority rate stabilization ($980,000), and $2 million in the sale of city assets [unnamed].
6:34: Perez seeks to clarify that he is not simply delaying monetization, he plans to vote against it.
Goldfield: There is $5 million we have to find. But there is no commitment in any of this that we will approve the monetization deal. If we do it, it will be for a smaller amount.
6:35: Committee member Aldermen Morehead leaves.
6:36: Goldfield: the original net income of $7 million from monetization has been knocked down to $5 million and the amendment is not a commitment to approve monetization.
Elicker: But there’s a line item that says monetization, that we are looking to approve here, on page 10.
6:38: Shah: Please move a white Ford sedan from in front of City Hall. UI needs to get under it.
6:39: Goldfield to Elicker: Look at the far column. We’re down to zero, for monetization.
Rusconi steps up to explain: The net impact is $5 million. $8 million on revenue and $3 million in costs (to pay to the parking meter company).
Goldfield: So where does it say we’re not committing to monetization?
Aldermanic staff: It’s in another amendment, the Monetization and Financial Stabilization Amendment.
6:41: Elicker: but the budget still assumes that we are spending $3 million and have $8 million coming in.
Goldfield: Right.
Elicker: “I don’t think and I won’t think this [monetization] is a good idea.”
Shah cuts off applause from the gallery.
Lemar and Castro also speak out against the monetization plan. Lemar: We need to acknowledge we are creating a $5 million hole.
6:47: Jackson-Brooks says the monetization plan amendment is not clear enough.
6:50: Lemar brings up another amendment, an amendment to an amendment, in fact.
Perez objects. Lemar says he’ll bring it up later.
6:50: Morehead is back. He has a question about the delay of the police class and reduction in police overtime. With all the crime and violence lately, what if things get worse? In my ward, we haven’t had walking beats. If it does affect our wards can we come back and amend this?
Shah: The chief said there would be a reduction in response times. Yes, there will be an effect on the communities. “It’s going to hurt us…. This is the decision that we made.”
6:55: Perez: Any alderman can propose to amend the budget in the future. But you have to find the money to pay for what you propose.
6:57: [It’s been brought to my attention that there is a man with a light-up Christmas tree hat in the audience. He’s is very studiously taking notes, while a springy green tree with a big yellow star bobs around above his head.]
[Late update: The man is Westville resident Glenn Nelson (pictured). He said he wore the hat to make a statement about the cutting of the holiday tree budget. “I feel that cutting the Christmas tree is not the point,” he said. “It’s a scare tactic.” Cuts are needed in administrative positions, he said. Any tax increase in the current economic climate cannot be justified, he added.]
6:58: Shah, to Morehead: Your point is well taken, my ward has seen violence.
Morehead: I know we have to make cuts. But it’s kind of hard. We already have slow police response times. Now it’s going to get even more slower?
7:00: Elicker: Back to monetization. Is it legal for us to have a $5 million placeholder in the budget?
Perez: Rating agencies have approved such placeholders in the past.
7:01: The appropriating ordinance amendment passes unanimously.
7:02: On to the monetization amendment, moved by Goldfield. [This is the amendment that “delays” or maybe does away with monetization, but creates the $5 million placeholder in the budget.] We’ve proposed to “put off the (w)hole decision” and leave a $5 million placeholder instead. If monetization goes forward, it may be smaller, it may be in two pieces. Or it may not go forward at all. That’s the point of this amendment.
Perez, the “other maker of this amendment” speaks: this allows us to look at all avenues. This is, believe it or not, an attempt to be clear that we are creating a $5 million placeholder.
“It doesn’t say that,” Alderman Darnell Goldson says, quietly, from the audience.
7:07: Elicker says: I appreciate Goldfield and Perez’s efforts. He’s concerned that a lot of time and money have already been spent on this. In the future, maybe the idea should have been presented to the board earlier.
No further discussion. The monetization amendment passes unanimously.
7:08: Lemar presents a new amendment! It calls for an additional cut of $1.5 million from the Board of Ed. Elicker seconds.
Lemar explains: $1.5 million from the BOE budget had been proposed by privatizing custodial services. We don’t want to do that. Let’s find it elsewhere. The amendment recommends finding the money in central office staff. [This kind of cut has been requested repeatedly by NHI commenters and NHCAN members.] The new total general fund contribution to the BOE budget would be $173,019,297, the same as last year.
7:12: Perez: Didn’t we just include a $1.5 million cut in the last amendment. Can we do this?
Shah: We’re already at the threshold for what we can reduce the Board of Ed.
Perez: We already reduced the BOE $3 million.
Budget staffer Becky Bombero steps up: $1.5 million in cuts to the BOE is promised through Innovation Based Budgeting (IBB). That $1.5 million is based on a predicted agreement with custodians. “To take any more from the Board of Ed would tie our hands on IBB.” [This is a real head-scratcher. There are murmurs of irritated confusion from the crowd.]
7:16: Lemar explains: His proposal would flat-fund the Board of Ed.
Goldfield: We would lose flexibility in negotiations with custodians. “I would rather keep our powder dry, I guess.” Goldfield says he will vote against the amendment.
7:18: Lemar: We can do this without affecting negotiations. He says he doesn’t want to be complicit in a yet-to-be-made agreement with custodians [privatization of custodial services, perhaps].
Perez: We’re going to create another $1.5 million hole with this amendment. All you’re doing is making that $5 million [the monetization hole] into $6.5 million.
Lemar: The amendment is to take $1.5 million from the BOE. The cuts shouldn’t be from Talented and Gifted program [as called for by the superintendent of schools]. Lemar acknowledges that the Board of Aldermen does not have line item control over the BOE budget and can only suggest where cuts come from.
Perez: What do we use that $1.5 million towards then?
Lemar: Property tax relief. Our IBB number stays the same. [Bombero shakes her head. There’s some confusion here that aldermen and budget staff are trying to clarify for one another.]
7:24: Castro: Last meeting, people came out and told us to send this back to the mayor. People can’t afford a tax increase. “I feel this is a responsible item presented to us. .… To share their pain, it must be equally among everyone. … This is, bottom line, what the tax payers were asking.”
Elicker: Perez is right. This does raise a $1.5 million hole. Puts pressure on us to find these cuts in the next year, forces hard decisions.
Perez asks to split the amendment into a recommendation to 1) not cut TAG and 2) cut of $1.5 million from BOE.
7:28: Lemar agrees. The policy part of the amendment says that cuts should come from central office staffing and “administrative ranks” and not from direct school services.
7:28: Discussion on part 2, to cut the BOE by $1.5 million. Jackson-Brooks says she’s confused. At this point the budget is balanced, with a $5 million hole.
Lemar: We have a much larger hole than that. IBB is a hole. Union givebacks are a hole. Monetization is a hole. The hole is bigger than $5 million, we’ve just allocated it out in different ways.
Jackson-Brooks: “What is the total hole?”
Lemar: It includes those three things.
Jackson-Brooks: Why do we want to make it bigger?
Lemar: To not create a bigger burden on taxpayer.
Jackson-Brooks: This creates a bigger hole.
Lemar: We’re making a statement about how much general fund money we want to give to BOE.
Jackson-Brooks: I’m going to have to vote against this.
Perez: At the end of the day the Board of Ed is going to be flat-funded. The question is, how do we use the second half of the $1.5 million?
7:42: [I’m having trouble with my wireless signal. Here’s what’s happened in the last few minutes: Lemar and Elicker’s amendment is proving controversial. Apparently it would reduce the money coming from IBB by $1.5 million. Lemar says all it does is simply spell out how much of the general fund is going to BOE. Elicker (a co-sponsor of the amendment) says it allows the alderman to have more control over the BOE funding, without locking the city into a stance on custodial negotiations in the future. Aldermen aren’t buying it. Goldfield says the amendment would mean the BOE would need to find other hard cuts in the budget, since custodial negotiations wouldn’t be possible. Besides, flat-funded means going backwards, Goldfield says.]
7:47: Lemar: The amendment seeks to flat fund the BOE. Over the last few months, we’ve heard numerous and grandiose plans to close the IBB gap: sale of assets, storm water authority. I want to bring clarity into what the BOE will spend. I want to have clarity as to what we are allocating. Lemar apologizes for boring Shah.
Shah cuts him off: “I’m not bored I’ve just heard this before.”
Elicker: The spirit of this also requests that cuts come from BOE central office staff.
7:53: Voting!: Five against. Six for. The amendment passes. Voting against: Shah, Goldfield, Bauer, Best, Jackson-Brooks.
Wait a minute! Stop the presses!
Goldfield: Morehead doesn’t have a vote, he resigned!
Shocked murmurs ripple as aldermanic staff review the matter. No one’s quite sure what to make of this.
Morehead: It made a request, but I never got official notice I was off the committee.
Morehead walks out! “This is ridiculous,” he mutters.
So it’s a tie! 5 – 5. Motion fails.
Castro: Wait, Morehead has been treated as a member so he’s a member.
Shah: “If he resigned, he resigned.”
7:57: Shah: Let’s move on to the second part, the policy amendment.
Jackson-Brooks and Perez have also stepped away from the table.
Elicker: The policy amendment recommends BOE cuts come from central office and administrative staff and the impact to classroom staff be minimized.
Discussion. Elicker: Proposed cuts have been in school operations. The amendment seeks to change that to school administration. “As we all know, we don’t have line item control over the Board of Ed” So we have to make our wishes known.
8:00: Perez and Jackson-Brooks are back. Still no sign of Morehead. Wait, there they go again. And Elicker’s talking with them in the corner. Meanwhile discussion continues. And… everyone’s back.
8:02: Clark: So this is a suggestion for where the BOE should make cuts.
Lemar: Yes.
Perez: A friendly amendment — let’s make it non-classroom in general, not just central office. What about travel expenses, for instance?
Lemar accepts the friendly amendment.
Perez: So the amendment would state that cuts will come from central office and administrative staff and other non-classroom areas? Yes.
8:05: No further discussion. The amendment passes unanimously.
On to Elicker and Lemar’s next proposed amendment: Cuts in a variety of departments. They could result in layoffs, it’s up to departments to make the decision where to cut. Cuts include $60,000 each to Board of Aldermen, Mayor’s office, Corp Counsel, Human Resources, Assessment, Building Inspection, and LCI; and $120,000 each from Finance, Public Safety, Police (non-sworn), Fire (non-sworn), and Public Health. [This is a big deal. It’s the kind of thing that NHCAN has been calling for, but not to the extent it has called for. I’m not sure what percentage of the respective departments total budgets these cuts represent. NHCAN has called for 10 percent from each budget.]
8:11: Goldfield is first to speak against the amendment: These cuts will come from the same places IBB will be looking for cuts. They will be hard. As the ‘Department Head’ of the Board of Aldermen, Goldfield asks that the cut to the aldermanic budget be taken separately. Also, he defends travel expenses as a way to bring ideas back from conferences.
Lemar: I have traveled and brought back ideas. But when we’re cutting fireworks and holiday trees, we need to look at cutting our own department. This allows the departments to find the cuts themselves.
8:15: Elicker: We need to make these hard decisions now and not later. The cuts would go towards not raising taxes, towards mill rate reduction.
Goldfield: In IBB we have a “hell of a lot more cuts to make.” This is adding to those cuts, including the $5 million monetization hole.
8:15: O’Sullivan-Best: How much would the mill rate go down?
Bombero: 0.21 reduction in mill rate.
Castro: We’re doing this so we can all share the pain. It’s about survival.
8:20: Lemar again expresses reluctance for using IBB as an argument not to make further cuts. He says he’s received a lot of sincere calls from his constituents asking for more cuts.
Elicker: We need to make these decisions as a board ourselves. We should focus on these departments and not on parks and elderly services and public works.
Lemar: We wanted to go further. This represents what we thought we could build consensus around.
8:20: No such luck. The amendment fails due to a split vote. Perez, O’Sullivan-Best, Bauer, Goldfield, and Shah vote against.
8:25: On to the next Lemar/Elicker amendment, which would cut the Board of Aldermen (BOA) travel budget by $12,500. The total travel budget for the city would be $727,923, most of which is in the BOE and can’t be cut by the BOA.
Goldfield again asks that it be brought before the full Board of Aldermen without being voted on by the Finance Committee.
8:30: Motion passes, 6 – 4. O’Sullivan Best, Shah, Goldfield, and Bauer vote against.
8:31: Next Lemar/Elicker amendment: Cut the state lobbyist from Economic Development, saving $50,000.
Clark: I can’t vote for anything that goes against economic development.
Lemar: It’s true, we need to grow our grand list and develop the city. But although the state lobbyist we contract with has been useful, there are other city staff that also lobby the state.
8:34: Voting! 5 – 5, the motion fails.
Next amendment, from Lemar, Elicker, Jackson-Brooks, and Castro. The legislation calls for each department to submit reports on a) vehicle use and b) cell phone use. Also, c) there shall be no travel for anything other than federal or state-mandated travel.
Goldfield: What does C mean?
Elicker: Departments should look at travel and cut extra.
Shah: But it says, NO travel.
Lemar: That could be clarified. The “underlying feeling” is that we need to “contain” travel.
8:39: Perez proposes changing the language to say travel for lobbying will be permitted.
Goldfield: Have you looked at the way the travel money is spent? I have. We have cops that travel for safety and “life-saving” training. That may not be state-mandated, but it sure is important. Maybe “we’re cutting off our noses to spite our faces.”
Clark: I’m not seeing these cuts as permanent. They’re not forever and ever. We have to weigh the essential with cuts.
8:45: Elicker: I’m not concerned with the language being too restrictive. [Aldermen have added to it now to include a variety of travel reasons]. It allows pretty much everything.
Amendment passes unanimously.
8:46: No we’re back to the main item at hand, with amendments having been made (and more having been rejected). We’re back to agenda item #2, the general budget appropriating ordinance.
Castro asks to abstain from anything having to do with the New Haven parking authority [her employer].
Perez sums up: We’ve cut the tax hike from over eight percent to around four percent.
Castro: Amendments could come back when the budget is in front of the full Board of Aldermen.
Perez: That’s right. We are not voting on the budget now. We’re simply making a recommendation to the full Board of Aldermen.
Elicker: We proposed a number of amendments that didn’t pass. I’d like to proceed without a recommendation to the board.
Shah: You would vote no.
Perez: You could make a motion that we send the budget to the full board with no recommendation.
8:53: Elicker: I’d like to move this without a recommendation.
Shah: There’s already a motion on the floor.
Goldfield: You could amend the motion to take it from “favorable” to “no recommendation.”
Perez: I withdraw my motion to move it favorably.
Goldfield: But it’s already been amended.
Elicker moves that the budget goes forward with no recommendation.
Lemar: I normally disdain spending hours and hours and then vote that it go forward with no recommendation, but it’s appropriate now.
Goldfield: I think we should move it forward with approval. We have an obligation to take action. “We should send this forward.”
Jackson-Brooks: I support the president [Goldfield] in this.
Castro: For all the hours this was given, it shocked me that the amendments package didn’t come to me until today. I’m supporting that we go with no recommendation.
Perez: I prefer what we have amended much better than what we first got. It has cuts, and a lower tax rate. Let’s vote to recommend it, it doesn’t mean that we can’t go further. You still need 16 votes [at the full board, to get a majority].
9:01: Elicker: Let’s be clear, a vote to recommend says we like this budget as it is. I looked at the new mayor’s amendment all day today and I still don’t understand it, particularly the IBB part.
9:04: Voting! Castro, Elicker, Lemar vote yes on the motion to pass the budget to the full board with no recommendation. The remaining seven members vote no. Motion fails.
9:05: New motion: to move it forward with approval, as amended.
Lemar: I’m going to vote yes, even though I voted to pass with no recommendation. I am going to re-introduce the amendments I brought up here when we get to the full board meeting.
Goldfield: “This has been one of the more collaborative processes in my experience.” There are genuine disagreements over how the city should proceed.
Jackson-Brooks: Can we get amendments in sooner? The full board will have very little time to look at all this.
Shah: We can try to improve the process. [Some discussion of this ensues, including talk of the internet challenges faced by some aldermen.]
9:12: Elicker says he wants to underscore Goldfield’s comment that none of this is personal. Also, I do agree that the mayor’s office has done a good job in making progress. “The mayor’s view and my view of the endpoint are different.” Finally, what does a no vote mean? That one recommends denial by the full board?
Goldfield: It’s a complicated question. “No can mean a bunch of different stuff.”
9:16: Voting. It’s approved unanimously except for a lonely “nay” from Elicker.
On to item #3 on the agenda: Tax and levy appropriating ordinance. That’s how all the stuff on the budget gets paid for.
9:18: Voting. Passes unanimously [except for Elicker? I’m not sure if I heard a nay or not.]
9:19: More voting, on item #4. Unanimously passed, save for Elicker. Oh, wait, he’s changed his vote to “aye.”
9:20: Uh-oh, the committee is getting confused about what it’s voting on.
“I can’t believe these guys are running my … city,” says a budget watchdog quietly as he packs up and leaves.
9:24: Rusconi steps in to try to help sort it out. Still discussing.
9:27: Progress. They just voted to approve something. Unclear what it was.
9:29: More voting. The rest of the agenda passes. In sum, the mayor’s amendment passes and most of the Lemar/Elicker amendments fail.
9:30: Meeting adjourned.