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Plainfield's City Council, with its last meeting of 2008 held last night and the state aid figure for FY2009 not expected before December 31, is now faced with a tricky problem: Finding the votes to pass the budget.
New Jersey state law requires that budgets be adopted by a majority of the members of the full governing body (a so-called 'super' majority). Which means, in the case of Plainfield which has seven councilors, FIVE affirmative votes.
That would have been fine up until last evening, but now a situation has emerged which complicates the budget adoption process. I have learned that Councilor William Reid will be basically unavailable for Council meetings in the foreseeable future.
This means that come January 1, the Council will be looking to new members Annie McWilliams and Adrian Mapp to vote on the budget.
And that's where it gets tricky.
McWilliams and Mapp, while they have attended some of the public budget hearings conducted by the Council, have been privy to neither the full documentation supplied to Council members by the Administration of Mayor Sharon Robinson-Briggs nor executive session discussions and presentations by the Administration.
Elected officials are typically loath to cast ballots in such circumstances, since by doing so they would open themselves to being tarred by the same brush as those who have crafted the budget. That is even more so the problem as it seems likely the Council is going to have to strike a budget with a significant tax increase.
An increase that may anger taxpayers, to whom Mayor Robinson-Briggs and Councilor Simmons must answer next year.
So, how should the Council handle the matter?
If both McWilliams and Mapp decline to vote, which is their legitimate prerogative -- either by abstaining or by voting 'present' -- the Council will not be able to pass a budget any time soon after the January 1 reorganization.
How should it approach the new Councilors about the matter? And what should it offer them by way of participation in crafting the final budget the Council will strike?
Should they start now? Or after January 1?
Does the Corporation Counsel have any opinion or advice?
Questions, questions, questions.
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4 comments:
"Loathing" is not why someone takes a council seat. Loat is not an option. Failure is not an option. It is now the responsibility of the 2009 council as a whole. Mapp and Mcwilliams must be told of their responsibility.
Dear, dear, dear 7:22 AM --
The entire thrust of my post was pondering HOW the Council would get to the place where the new Councilors would want to participate. Just voting blindly is NOT what the voters expected when they elected McWilliams and Mapp is my guess.
Now, I am going to channel Miss Cumro (my 4th grade teacher) for you -- 'loath' and 'loathe', while they both come from an Old English root meaning 'disklike', do NOT mean the same thing in today's English.
LOATH -- the adjective which I used in the post means reluctant, or unwilling. (And please remember I spoke of elected officials GENERALLY and not McWilliams or Mapp.)
LOATHE -- means to detest or abhor. There is no suggestion McWilliams and Mapp are loathing anything about serving on the Council. Yet.
Just read your blog and then Doc Yood's comment about returning to calendar year budgeting. My recollection is that the State forced the City to switch to the July 1 fiscal year some years back. I don't recall the specific reason, but it may have had something to do with the annual requests for significant amounts of supplemental state aid.
Municipalities can choose. The fiscal year (which we are on) aligns with the state's budgeting process. The calendar year comes with its own set of issues, and aid for calendar-year towns doesn't come any (relatively) sooner -- seems they get their figure around May -- so it's six of one, half dozen of the other.
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