Financial issues to face another forum


Henderson residents will get their second chance to ask questions stemming from the 2004 audit Monday night, although this time the public forum won’t be limited to budget issues.

Mayor Clem Seifert will resume his Speak Up Henderson forums with an hour-long open-mike session before the regular City Council meeting. The session will run from 6 to 7 p.m. in the council chambers at the Municipal Building on Beckford Drive.

Seifert plans to hold such sessions before every council meeting, with council members and city staff invited to join him in fielding citizens’ questions and complaints. For questions that can’t be answered immediately, the mayor promises to bring a response to the next forum.

While the regular, open-topic forums are an evolution of the Speak Up Henderson sessions Seifert held in each of the city’s four wards last year, his decision to hold them before each council meeting grew out of the City Council’s public forum on the audit Feb. 28.

Mayor Pro Tem Bernard Alston scheduled that first-ever public forum on a Henderson audit to deal with public confusion and criticism over how a projected $1.2 million general fund balance at the end of fiscal 2004 on June 30 instead became an audited amount of $464,163. That drop to an unrestricted fund balance of less than 3.5 percent of projected spending caught council members and the mayor by surprise and generated a critical letter from the state’s Local Government Commission, which wants cities to have savings equal to at least 8 percent of their expenditures.

That forum drew a crowd of about 100 people and 11 speakers, who exceeded the hour set aside for public questions and comments. Alston and Seifert agreed at the time that it would be a good idea to continue the forum March 21, and Seifert soon decided to make Monday’s session the first of the reborn Speak Up Henderson forums.

“The problem isn’t the fund balance, but that’s what everybody sees,” Seifert said in an interview Wednesday. He said the city needs innovative ways to raise revenue beyond property taxes and water bills.

Monday’s speakers will not be limited to financial issues, nor is there a fixed time limit as there is for people who sign up to speak during council meetings.

Still, money is likely to be the hot topic Monday. In addition to lingering questions from the audit and the forum three weeks ago, the budget for the fiscal year starting July 1 is in play. City department heads had to submit their budget requests by last Monday, and the City Council plans to meet with the department heads individually during a series of meetings in the first week of April.

Seifert said he intends to solicit public advice on the budget in a more formal way through a citizen advisory council. He would prefer the City Council’s involvement, but “let them work with me if need be.”

Both the forums and the advisory council reflect Seifert’s stated belief that people will tend to reach the same conclusions when they all have the same information.