Archive for September, 2017

Usually when families don’t have a lot of money, they get very good at budgeting.  It helps to plan spending so you don’t get surprised later in the month or year.

Organizations budget for that reason, but also to make sure they’ve allocated funding to important initiatives that advance the goals of the organization.   The budget is a central planning document that gets everyone in the organization aligned.   This true for companies, schools, non-profits and most governments.

This should not be news to anyone in America.  Every literate America knows that organizations must have budgets.

And yet, the City of Trenton operates without a one and has done so for years.  It should be no mystery then that we have a sense of aimlessness in our effort to revitalize.

“What?”, you ask, “Trenton does have a budget, the Mayor submits one to Council every year”.

Fellow citizens, that is a charade.  Last year’s budget for fiscal year 2017 (that’s July 1, 2016 – June 30, 2017) was not approved by City Council until April 2017.   That’s 9 months into the fiscal year.  For 9 months, we had no budget.

The City Business Administrator is planning to draft a budget for 2018  in October.   That’s four months after the 2018 fiscal year has started.  It will be months before City Council approves it.   Who does that?

It’s not just bad business its in violation of our own City Code.  Our city code is clear: violation of it.

§ 2-78 Budget preparation.

A.  The budget shall be prepared by the Mayor with the assistance of the Business Administrator. During the month of November, the Mayor shall require all department heads to submit requests for appropriations for the ensuing budget year and to appear before the Mayor or the Business Administrator at public hearings which shall be held during that month on the various requests. On or before the 15th day of January, the Mayor shall submit to Council his/her recommended budget together with such explanatory comment or statement as (s)he may deem desirable.

B.  The Business Administrator, with the assistance of the Director of Finance, shall prepare all estimates of non-property tax revenues anticipated for the support of each annual budget.

The City Code, our law, says that the Mayor must submit a budget to Council by January 15 for the ensuing year.  The ensuing year begins July 1.

This timing makes sense.  It gives the Council and the public time to react and for the administration to make changes.

I’ve heard every excuse there is from our city leaders.   The most common one is “we don’t know what the state will give us.”   Do you suspect that any company in America knows its revenues for the upcoming year?  Of course not.  They must estimate.  If things go wrong, they adjust.   But no one wades into a fiscal year without a plan.  No one.

Unless you’re a city government like Trenton.  OR Minneapolis, which also didn’t submit a timely budget and is now being sued by its tax collector.  Is that what it’s going to take in Trenton? Are we going to have to sue ourselves to force our government to act responsibly?

We realistically can’t fix the 2018 fiscal year.  It will be as bad as all the previous Jackson years (though hopefully we won’t have another $5,000,000 stolen).   However, we can avoid re-electing the perpetrators of this debacle.  That includes the current Mayor and any sitting or past council member.   They are all complicit in the mismanagement of our city and our money.

I have written many times about the budget process in Trenton and its many failing and opportunities.  It’s a source of frustration for me that even after collaborating with some of Trenton’s most knowledgeable citizens to recommend improvements, our city leaders have roundly ignored us.  All we  want is well-run, transparent government that plans for improvement.

Here are a few of the previous Reinvent Trenton Articles on our Budget:

Trenton is adrift because it operates without a budget

Trentonians favor fewer services and lower taxes

Trenton’s Budget won’t fix itself