Tonight the City Council will vote on temporary budget appropriations for the month of April, meaning the budget process will take longer than the ideal first three months of the calendar year. No budget hearings have been scheduled and the 2013 Citizens Budget Advisory Committee has not yet been convened.
Finance Director Al Restaino made reassuring promises last week and maybe all will be well. One wonders, however, how thorough the process may be while the city is still relying on between five and seven hours per week of services from a part-time chief finance officer.
The city had a full-time, in-house CFO until Peter Sepelya left at the end of 2007. Three years then elapsed with no CFO. Dickering between the branches of government led to no outcome until the state Division of Local Government Services threatened daily fines for each council member and the mayor until a CFO was hired.
The November 2010 deadline was technically met with the hiring of Ron Zilinski, but he did not start until January 2011 and then was allowed to put in just 28 hours per week, with two days' actual presence in Plainfield. The SFY Fiscal Year 2011 budget passed in December, six months into the year that began July 1, 2010. Zilinski then served through TY 2011, a six-month "transition year" to put the city back on a calendar fiscal year.
But he and the city parted ways in January 2012 and in February 2012, the solution was to hire South Plainfield Borough Administrator and CFO Glenn Cullen to serve Plainfield on a part-time basis, five to seven hours per week, which is still the situation.
The CY 2012 budget process benefited by the presence of consultant David Kochel, who found and fixed many glitches. There was also the odd matter of City Administrator Eric Berry sending letters to the state attacking the governing body's amendments (read Plaintalker's commentary here). This writer expressed hope that the 2013 budget process would go better.
Will it? So far there has been no mention of the council having a consultant to help out. The CY 2012 budget passed in June 2012, closing a strange chapter in the city's fiscal history. City officials later could not provide various details, such as the tax impact on the owner of an average home or, at times, the tax rate itself.
Citizens need to be on high alert for budget shenanigans this year especially, as several key elections will take place in 2013. The process should be a straightforward accounting of revenues and costs and decisions based on the city's current and future fiscal health. May it be so.
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bye bye Library money... Look to the preachers of VOTE THE PARTY LINE for whom to blame..
ReplyDeleteI, too, am dismayed by the fact that the administration has not seen fit to give us any information on the budget. It makes no sense for us not to have a budget document at this point in the calendar year--all we get are excuses, and there is no excuse.
ReplyDeleteRebecca
P.S. To Rob's point, we will protect the library's budget--the mayor's attempt to cut it by 40% at a time when residents need it the most was rejected by the council--the library is a critical core service of our city.