Council Meeting, Budget Hearing Tonight

Tonight's City Council meeting includes a hearing on the 2012 introduced budget, but it is likely that few citizens will come with comments.

The meeting is 8 p.m. in Municipal Court, 325 Watchung Ave.

The documents on file for public scrutiny at this point include only the administration's budget, to some degree a wish list that the governing body and its Citizen Budget Advisory Committee will now study over coming weeks. The council has set a schedule of six budget deliberation sessions over coming weeks, at which department and division heads will be asked to explain their budget requests. By May 15, the council may have budget amendments ready to modify the administration's requests and the goal is adoption of the 2012 budget by the end of May.

Documents are on file in the City Clerk's office. One of the problems in comparing the 2012 budget with the previous one is that the city converted to a calendar year by having a six-month "transition year." The figures for "TY 2011" on the documents are roughly half of a full year, but former Chief Financial Officer Ron Zilinski has resigned and is not around to explain any nuances.

Plaintalker spotted a couple of oddities in a quick review of the introduced budget, such as a small amount for "other expenses" for the Environmental Commission. This commission was established by ordinance in 2001 but has never had any members or meetings, so how could it have an expense line? It seemed at first glance like a bit of creative accounting such as was uncovered in the WBLS investigation, where expenses for a radio broadcast were attached to budget lines such as "hardware and software maintenance."

Anyway, residents concerned about municipal spending can take a look today at budget documents and can follow along at the deliberations that start with a session 7 p.m. Thursday in City Hall Library on the Public Safety budget.

Tonight's meeting also includes a vote on hiring David Kochel as a budget advisor. Kochel served as acting city administrator in 2011 and has 33 years of experience in municipal government. His advice should be extremely valuable in the current situation where there is no permanent CFO and a new city administrator. The full schedule of budget deliberation sessions is available in the City Clerk's office.

--Bernice