The budget procedure
With Mahor Dorinda Borer announcing her $ M budget last week, the tedious, and what some would call “arcane” process of approval now takes place. Put in place when the city’s charter went from a Board of Selectmen to a mayor=council form of governance, the process of approving a budget has had its dramatic moments.
The process has what can be termed “four steps:” the formal proposal of the budget by the mayor, the public hearing, the monthlong review by the City Council as a committee-of-the-whole, and adoption. Step one was completed last week with the formal proposal by Mayor Borer. The next step is the public hearing which was set for…
Once the public hearing is completed, the council goes under the leadership of the Chairman of the Finance Committee. A meeting date is set, and the review process begins. To facilitate things, the committee-of-the-whole, once in session does not adjourn until its work is complete, it only suspends the meeting to return to another date. This bypasses the need for a quorum during subsequent sessions once the quorum for the initial meeting is established.
The review is of all departments and is an open session, where the public may observe. It is not, however, a meeting that allows for public comments. Sometimes, department heads or other officials are called into the session to explain some line-item or expenditure. Other than that, the committee reviews the individual budgets and may be altered by means of a supermajority of the 13-member council. That means nine votes are needed to make changes.
This supermajority has been difficult at times to attain and has hampered the process in years when the spending plan has been particularly criticized. This requirement has been the subject of charter revision, but has not, for assorted reasons, been changed. It has been one of the myriads of reasons the city’s financial picture has been marred by bad budgets, and the lack of alternatives offered by the council. The most egregious of these happened in the 1991 budget, when an 8-5 Democratic-Republican split on the council failed to make necessary changes. The result was a budget that was adopted by default (read below) that was $17 million awash in red ink. It resulted in a state review of our finances for the next three years, the first such takeover.
Once the review process is completed, the process of adoption begins and must be completed by the first Thursday of May according to the charter. This last step is a simple ordinance passage by means of a simple majority. Failure to pass the ordinance (as happened in 1991) means the budget defaults to the original proposal made by the mayor with no alterations. This default first happened in that fateful year but has happened at least one more time since.
Because the city is under the Municipal Accountability Review Board (MARB), it must review the package before it can go into effect. The MARB has the right to make changes in the plan (which has been done over the years) before final approval.
Once approved, the plan goes into effect on July 1, the beginning of the new fiscal year.
Taxpayers should be aware of the process, and the various steps needed before the budget is adopted. The meeting on .. gives all of us an opportunity to take part, making our concerns heard.
The budget is the one document that affects all residents. Understanding the procedures is necessary to make informed comments and statements.