Budgeting in Plainfield, how embarrassing!

Lilly Pulitzer's shocking combinations and Plainfield's budget?

 
At last, a resolution introducing Plainfield's 2013 budget will be taken up by the Council at tonight's business meeting.

Never mind that Rahway is expected to ADOPT its budget after its hearing tonight (see here).

Never mind that the state-mandated budget introduction date (February 10) is ancient history.

Never mind that when Plainfield switched from a fiscal year to a calendar year budget, starting with January 2012, the promise was that this would make it easier for the Robinson-Briggs administration to prepare and present its budget proposal in a more timely (!) fashion.

Never mind that the Robinson-Briggs administration does not follow the procedures outlined by the City Charter, which Maria Pellum recently pointed out (see here), including --

• Having department heads submit their budget proposals at a scheduled public hearing before the City Administrator to justify their proposals BEFORE introduction to the Council;
• Inclusion of a 'budget message' with each year's submission by the Mayor.

Never mind that a Citizens Budget Advisory Committee has yet to be appointed.

Never mind that no schedule of public budget hearings by the City Council has been set.

Never mind that initial queries from individual Councilors at last Monday's agenda-setting session indicate that, once again, the budget document is evidently beset with flaws, omissions and errors.

Despite promises by the Robinson-Briggs administration, it appears the taxpayers will be treated to the same process as in previous years: late and unacceptable to the state without 'scrubbing' by a professional adviser (whose hiring is also up for a vote tonight).

Mayor Robinson-Briggs would no doubt sympathize completely with her soul mate, the fashion designer Lilly Pulitzer, whose obituary appears in today's New York Times (see here).

When told by the curator of a 2008 retrospective of her designs by the Parsons School in New York that a pattern she particularly wanted included could not be because its costs on the vintage market was outside his budget, Pulitzer replied, 'A budget? How embarrassing.'

How embarrassing, indeed.

---

• Rahway Rising:  "City budget up for hearing, vote on Monday"
• Maria's Blog:  "The annual budget and the city charter: Let's follow the action"
• Obituary:  "Lilly Pulitzer, heiress who gave elite clothes a tropical splash"
  

-- Dan Damon [follow]

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