City Council Approves Mayor’s Budget

Mayor Joshua Garcia presented a $66 million budget that included new positions (crime analyst, engineer, chief financial officer) more money for departments that said they needed it and City Councilor Kevin Jourdan trimmed about $63,000 from the budget with what has become known as one of two voting blocks in the council.

Backing Jourdain on most of his motions were City Councilors Linda Vacon, Howard Greaney, Mike Sullivan, Carmen Ocasio and David Bartley. The majority block: City Council President Tessa Murphy-Romboletti,  and Councilors Meg McGrath-Smith, Israel Rivera, Jenny Rivera, Juan Anderson-Burgos and Patti Devine, controlled the cut by a couple of time a breakout from the group of seven.

Jourdain compared this year’s budget to last year’s and pointed out discrepancies that raised a red flag such as a request to fund $90,000 for systems upgrades there are still funds in that account. Jourdain made a motion to level-fund the IT department to $60,000 because the department had spent $49,000 to date, so did not need an extra $30,000. However, his motion did not pass.

To Jourdain and Bartley’s who both spoke out of turn to make comments that the council president was letting others make disrespectful  comments, Murphy-Romboletti said:

” If I truly called out every single one of you for every single thing that you do, every single time you do it, we wouldn’t have a meeting. So sometimes I kind of have to pick my battles. But thank you very much for the feedback and I’ll be sure to take that into consideration going forward, Councilor Jordan.”

When the budget hearing was adjourned, after almost three hours of tension, members quickly dispersed into the evening.

Charter and Rules Committee

Other meetings held this week were Charter & Rules, Finance and the Ordinance Committees.

Charter & Rules took up and then tabled the question of whether the form of government in the city should be headed by an elected mayor or a town manager appointed by the City Council.

The motion was introduced by Councilor Vacon.

” I did let (Mayor García) know that I wasn’t at all looking to move anything this year, with everything we have going on already, but more to have a conversation to see about going forward, what make make sense. As we are starting to evaluate and create by ordinance some different qualifications and standards, and look at our whole system a little bit.  And he was warm to that concept and idea. And so I guess right now I just leave it right there and say that maybe we can talk further about it at a time, maybe after budget. And after all the intensity has gone by where we could have a deeper discussion about what variations or if any, might work.”