Budget Talks Begin
Tuesday's budget session was memorable not for the information presented, but for an element of disarray that did not bode well for future talks.
The meeting was the first for the council and its newly-formed citizen advisory committee. The group had two orientation sessions before last night's meeting. Each committee member had a budget binder and a schedule of presentations by department and division heads had been set. Last night, the council and committee were to hear from Douglas Peck, director of Administration & Finance, Health and Social Services; Audit & Control; Tax Assessor and Tax Collector. Peck gave a knowledgeable overview of the budget process, all the more impressive because he came to the city just weeks ago from Ohio and had to get up to speed on both state and city budget guidelines.
However, slides projected on a screen did not match pages of a handout and included one admittedly meaningless graph. City Administrator Marc Dashield ran off copies of other handouts during the meeting, adding to the stuff committee members were balancing on their laps.
An hour into the scheduled two and a half hour session, the Audit & Control presentation was no sooner completed than City Council President Harold Gibson announced he was ending the meeting so participants could get home to see the presidential debate. He said the group would pick up tonight where it left off Tuesday.
This prompted some agitated hand-waving from Tax Collector Marie Glavan, trying to alert Dashield and Peck to the fact that she could not attend a meeting tonight.
Having one of those why-am-I-doing-all-this attacks, I left before the meeting was adjourned.
It is unclear why Gibson waited until mid-meeting to announce his decision. While not set in stone, the budget session timetable calls for presentations by Purchasing, Administrative Services and Municipal Court tonight, Public Works tomorrow night, Public Safety (Police and Fire) next Wednesday and Social Services next Thursday. Certainly it is important to hear from both the Tax Collector and Tax Assessor's offices, but they will now have to be squeezed in on other days.
Tomorrow night Schools Superintendent Steve Gallon III is delivering a State of the District address and holding a community reception. The event is from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. and will be preceded by tours of the new school starting at 6 p.m. Next Thursday, there is a Planning Board meeting. These conflicts will force meeting mavens to pick and choose, despite Councilman Rashid Burney's urgings for citizens to follow the budget deliberations.
The budget committee appears to be a very dedicated, intelligent bunch of folks who will be assessing not only the budget, but the professionalism of the presenters as well. City staff would do well to display their competencies at the highest level for these citizens.
--Bernice Paglia
The meeting was the first for the council and its newly-formed citizen advisory committee. The group had two orientation sessions before last night's meeting. Each committee member had a budget binder and a schedule of presentations by department and division heads had been set. Last night, the council and committee were to hear from Douglas Peck, director of Administration & Finance, Health and Social Services; Audit & Control; Tax Assessor and Tax Collector. Peck gave a knowledgeable overview of the budget process, all the more impressive because he came to the city just weeks ago from Ohio and had to get up to speed on both state and city budget guidelines.
However, slides projected on a screen did not match pages of a handout and included one admittedly meaningless graph. City Administrator Marc Dashield ran off copies of other handouts during the meeting, adding to the stuff committee members were balancing on their laps.
An hour into the scheduled two and a half hour session, the Audit & Control presentation was no sooner completed than City Council President Harold Gibson announced he was ending the meeting so participants could get home to see the presidential debate. He said the group would pick up tonight where it left off Tuesday.
This prompted some agitated hand-waving from Tax Collector Marie Glavan, trying to alert Dashield and Peck to the fact that she could not attend a meeting tonight.
Having one of those why-am-I-doing-all-this attacks, I left before the meeting was adjourned.
It is unclear why Gibson waited until mid-meeting to announce his decision. While not set in stone, the budget session timetable calls for presentations by Purchasing, Administrative Services and Municipal Court tonight, Public Works tomorrow night, Public Safety (Police and Fire) next Wednesday and Social Services next Thursday. Certainly it is important to hear from both the Tax Collector and Tax Assessor's offices, but they will now have to be squeezed in on other days.
Tomorrow night Schools Superintendent Steve Gallon III is delivering a State of the District address and holding a community reception. The event is from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. and will be preceded by tours of the new school starting at 6 p.m. Next Thursday, there is a Planning Board meeting. These conflicts will force meeting mavens to pick and choose, despite Councilman Rashid Burney's urgings for citizens to follow the budget deliberations.
The budget committee appears to be a very dedicated, intelligent bunch of folks who will be assessing not only the budget, but the professionalism of the presenters as well. City staff would do well to display their competencies at the highest level for these citizens.
--Bernice Paglia
posted by Bernice at 7:41 AM
1 Comments:
Alphonse & Gaston had more order in their routine than last nights budget hearing. Plainfield budget deliberations are more important than a national debate - where few opinions would be altered by what was said or not said by the 2 candidates. Harold Gibson's failure to deal with the city's business that citizens are very concerned about - a projected 4%+ tax increase- was inapropriate. Where are your priorities Harold? Let's hope that the next councilperson at-large has a better sense of what is important to the constituency.
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