Several Jersey City Council members expressed dismay that the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs will only review one budget amendment at the tail end of yesterday’s over four-hour caucus meeting.
By John Heinis/Hudson County View
The council had prepared a seven-page resolution of amendments for Wednesday evening’s public session where the budget could potentially be approved, which Council President Denise Ridley pulled for discussion.
Finance Director and CFO Bill Viqueira then approached the governing body to explain the latest on the municipal spending plan from the administration’s point of view before Ridley said she’d first like to bring him up to speed.
” … The council initiated four amendments to the introduced budget to the state, the state did get back to us at the end of last week and requested that we make one combined amendment,” she began.
“So on Friday, myself, other council members who were requesting amendments, our CFO, and some other members of the administration got together to take another crack at it and we tried to put as much of those four into one and that was sent to the council this weekend for review and we had to send that to the state today in hopes that they will get back to us tomorrow and there is a placeholder here for us on the agenda …”
Ridley continued that there is a public hearing for the introduced budget at tomorrow’s meeting, with a special meeting planned for Wednesday, August 26th to speak on the budget amendment.
“As you described the process, we do need to submit to DCA today one revised amendment if we hope to keep this on the agenda for Wednesday. I have let them know that we’re still hoping to submit that somewhere over the next hour or two and they will do their best to turn that around,” Viqueira stated.
“I provide comments and/or approval prior to Wednesday’s meeting. That amendment, as you described, I will say … it hasn’t been approved yet by DCA, I don’t want to get too far ahead of our own headlights, but includes some increases to local revenue.”
He further stated that the local revenues reflect all city collections to date, also noting that the most significant feedback from the DCA on the introduced budget was to move health benefit expenses from “outside the cap” to “inside the appropriations cap.”
Viqueira then highlighted that the council had previously approved raising the appropriations cap by three-and-a-half percent, as HCV first reported, therefore this move should not be a major change, though some appropriations did have to be reduced.
Additionally, the city’s financial chief said they tried to restore certain positions that had been eliminated, while efforts were made to ensure police overtime will be reduced, all of which will bring the municipal tax hike to around the 15.5 percent required by the state.
“As the public is watching, this is not the normal process in terms of council members being able to submit multiple amendments. I do appreciate the work the work that went on this weekend … I know people probably didn’t want to do that on a sunny Saturday,” expressed Ward B Councilman Joel Brooks.
“So I do appreciate the work that went on, but just wanna voice that council members worked hard to prepare amendments that we, in good faith, thought would be presented to the public and voted on. I’ll just speak for myself, I understand that we are under DCA supervision with the loan and state aid we’re receiving, literally every dollar that we’re spending and allocating is being watched.”
With that said, Brooks indicated that he wanted to express his frustration that the council was not able to present multiple budget amendments, as they originally thought they would.
Ridley added that she was not sure when either the change and/or breakdown in communication with the DCA occurred, but she was certain they were initially expecting four amendments at one point, before they ultimately decided they only wanted one.
“Council president, correct, we had let them know we’d be submitting multiple amendments to the extent … I think there was a breakdown, it became clear relatively late in those discussions that … each of these amendments was meant to stand alone, creating some significant technical hurdles in terms of the process for introducing them and being able to vote and adopt them,” Viqueira said.
“Once that became clear, we had to change track and focus on one amendment that stood on its own, to the extent we want multiple amendments, those amendments would have to build off the first.”
Councilman at-Large Rolando Lavarro asked if the Division of Local Government Services (DLGS), a subdivision of the DCA, would provide feedback on the amendment before the end of the day Monday, to which Viqueira said they were not expecting that.
“I’ll just say for the record, I’ll echo what Councilman Brooks said, that there was some frustration, but I know there’s frustration on all sides at this point through the entire process and it’s not the way I thought it would go, at the end of the day, but we are where we are at this point,” Lavarro added.
“I do recall, it was 2020, myself and Mayor/former Councilman [James] Solomon introduced budget amendments at the time and thought was gonna be a similar process this time around if it cleared the hurdles with the Division of Local Government Services. But I appreciate the challenge everyone’s had, including the administration, coming up with a unified amendment.”
Councilman at-Large Michael Griffin urged the administration to stay on top of appropriations and spending for each individual department, since it’s nearly impossible to do allocations if any department reports their figures incorrectly.
The latter portion of yesterday’s caucus, which started at 10 a.m., largely went unnoticed since Solomon led a “Make Polluters Pay” rally on the steps of City Hall at 1 p.m., with a counter-protest organized over the municipal tax increase.
