Divided council torpedoes its own budget

Published 5:00 am Saturday, December 16, 2006

Capital projects are left in limbo, after four councilors turn against spending plan.

The City Council, after spending months taking apart and rebuilding the mayor’s proposed 2007 budget, spent Wednesday night dismantling it again, casting votes against their reconstructed budget, followed by a votes approving parts of it.

Puzzled? So is city Finance Director Elray Konkel.

“Everyone is sufficiently confused,” Konkel said Thursday morning, after conferring with the city administrator and attorney about just what happened the previous evening.

Wednesday, the council voted against adopting its $50 million budget.

Then, realizing that the city can’t pay the lighting bills or staff salaries without some money approved, the council went back and OK’d the operations portion of the budget, which amounts to $26 million.

The other half of the budget is still in limbo, including $21 million worth of capital improvement projects and many funding items that the council had added to the mayor’s budget, such as money for open space purchases and affordable housing initiatives.

“My understanding is that they adopted the ‘plan’ for the other half – the capital projects – but they did not adopt the actual funding,” said Konkel. “That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.”

The budget was rejected by a 4-3 vote, although it likely would have been vetoed by Mayor Darlene Kordonowy had it passed.

Councilors Chris Snow, Kjell Stoknes and Bill Knobloch agreed that the budget was unfit for approval and voted no.

Councilman Nezam Tooloee, who had orchestrated substantial changes to the mayor’s draft budget, surprised some by also voting against the budget.

Tooloee’s issue: the document, he said, did not include enough information on what current staff were doing with their time and the taxpayers’ money.

“I’d be happy to support the budget when I get the information I asked for that shows me what available staff are doing,” he said.

Tooloee said he had been requesting the information since September.

“The question I asked then and have kept asking is basic management information,” he said. “We have 144 staff. How are we allocating them to projects?”

But Konkel took issue with Tooloee’s assertion, pointing to the six pages in the mayor’s budget that listed the information Tooloee said he requested.

“Staff put tremendous time into producing this detail,” Konkel said. “I’m not sure the council ever read it.”

Other councilors opposed the budget on different grounds.

Knobloch said the budget depended too much on funding from bonds, failed to provide for necessary staff hires at City Hall, and undermined the city administration.

“I don’t know why I’d want my fingerprints on this budget,” he said.

But Councilwoman Debbie Vancil called the late-hour objections an “unprecedented political maneuver (aimed at) holding the Bainbridge Island city budget hostage on line-items.”

The council’s later efforts at approving portions of the budget with and without funding left some councilors scratching their heads.

“Did we just approve the budget we just turned down?” asked Stoknes after the council passed the operations portion of the budget.

Councilman Jim Llewellyn said the meeting’s contentiousness and inefficiency supported a change to a mayor-less City Hall helmed by the council and an administrative professional.

“This meeting’s the poster child for (having) a council-manager form of government,” he said.

Some of the nearly 60 bleary-eyed audience members also expressed frustration with the proceedings.

“It’s egos on parade,” whispered one council meeting regular, as the meeting dragged well into its fourth hour.

“Those aren’t egos,” retorted a first-time attendee. “Those are (expletive) losers.”

Kordonowy said she felt the crowd’s pain and offered a ballot-box remedy.

“I apologize to all of you,” she said. “But you elected us. You need to watch us. If we don’t do the right job, kick us out.”

The council plans to schedule an additional budget meeting in the coming weeks.

Mayor Darlene Kordonowy appeared relieved that the council did not adopt the full budget, which had undergone substantial changes after she and administration staff crafted the original draft in October.

“I came tonight not wanting to veto the budget, but prepared to veto,” Kordonowy told the council. “Now I don’t have to veto the budget.”

She first threatened to toss out the budget during a meeting in November, after the council deferred her request for 12 new staff and added burdens on existing employees, including new committees that would require staff support.

Wednesday, the mayor said her budget proposals had been “marginalized” by the council and were “not even taken as a starting point.”

Kordonowy said many of the proposed new hires were essential for city government, including a police officer assigned to island schools, two traffic officers and human resources specialists.

She also characterized some of the council changes as impractical, such as a $100,000 line-item to initiate 500 new affordable housing units within 18 months.

“There hasn’t been 500 affordable housing units built in Kitsap County in the last three years,” she said.

City Administrator Mary Jo Briggs called the amended budget “neither responsible and responsive.” Not approving the 12 requested staff positions, she said, would “create a domino effect” and delay many city projects.