What’s the public’s place in crafting budget?


City Council members brought very different philosophies into their meeting on the budget Tuesday night.

On one end was Elissa Yount, who pushed her colleagues to hold the required public hearing on the budget sooner rather than later. She wants the hearing early enough so that suggestions and comments from the public can be incorporated into the final budget.

“We ought to at least provide the opportunity, even though it’s our responsibility to make the budget,” Yount said. She said she already has received an outraged call over the possibility that Powell Bill money, which the state gives the city to spend on road projects, won’t be spent as freely as usual on paving this year. Although the money’s use is restricted, it helps build up the general fund balance if the city saves it for a year instead of spending it.

City Manager Eric Williams said a May public hearing is possible, although he doubts more than a handful of people will speak. And most of those will focus on a few specifics, such as their property taxes, and not the big picture.

“We’ve got to educate the public on just how serious our financial situation is and that for the next four or five years things are going to be tough,” Yount said. “We have to cut.”

“Cut what?” Ranger Wilkerson said.

“Cut everything,” Yount said. “We’ve got to send the message that things are not going to be the way they were.”

Wilkerson earlier advised that such extreme cutting would just force the council to do more work later.
“All of ’em are going to come back, and all of ’em are going to get their money.”

Williams agreed that Wilkerson’s scenario has been the typical process in the past: Agencies that have complained about cuts generally have gotten their money.

At the other extreme from Yount was Lonnie Davis, who minimized the public’s role in the budget process. “It’s not up to the general public to make the budget. It is up to us to make the budget. … We are the ones subject to the criticism from the general budget. … That’s our task.”

Davis warned of promoting “disharmony.” He said the council shouldn’t try to fool people, but it also shouldn’t it spread around a lot of negatives. He said many members of the public are operating under erroneous information, but the council can work it out “if we do it together. We need to work as a team.”

“The less people know, the less you stir them up,” Mike Rainey said. He called for working on the budget “without bringing the entire community into it.” He said he doesn’t want to see 300 or 400 people at the public hearing on the budget.

“They don’t understand,” Wilkerson said. “The employees don’t understand.”

In that regard, Bernard Alston said, the city employees are no different from most people. “One of the things that is as true as anything else is that the citizens, the people, quite frankly, any time you sit in a position of authority, the people who sit outside that position are going to act like children. … Most folks are going to look at this about ‘How is this going to affect me?’ ”

Still, Alston said the council needs to hold a long-term priority-setting session, probably before finishing this budget. “At least we know where we want the money we don’t have to go.”