New London council passes budget despite mayor's admonition
New London — The City Council on Wednesday night approved a budget for fiscal year 2016 that would limit the increase in city spending to about 1.30 percent and necessitate a tax rate increase of roughly 3.90 percent.
The spending plan the council passed by a unanimous vote includes $43,919,919 in expenditures on the general government side — which would be about $95,600 less than the current year’s budget — and $42,445,400 for the Board of Education — an increase of about $1.2 million over the current budget.
Before the council began its deliberations, Mayor Daryl Justin Finizio addressed the councilors and told them his administration estimates that the budget underfunds mandated costs by $657,903 and overestimates revenue by $68,489 for a total “built-in” deficit of $726,392.
“These are the city’s bills, these are the bills we have to pay, we have to meet our financial obligations and balance our budget as reasonably as possible,” the mayor said. “But $726,000 is too big a deficit to ignore. I appreciate that you are doing your best to reach a bottom line that is acceptable to taxpayers ... but I cannot support a city budget that is underfunded by that significant of a sum.”
Councilors who spoke during the meeting said they were comfortable with covering any overspending in next year’s budget by applying surplus funds from previous fiscal years to cover the shortfalls, instead of depositing the surpluses into the city’s fund balance or savings account.
“I believe that we should be able to go forward with this budget even if we have to take money from the fund balance to be able to pay those bills; there is money there to pay those bills,” Council President Rev. Wade A. Hyslop said. “And I’m quite certain the public would agree with us if we went ahead and did that.”
Councilor Michael Passero, who seemed to lead the charge on the council to avoid an increase in general government spending and limit the necessary tax rate increase, said he expects the mayor and his administration to work within the budget passed by the City Council.
“I would hope that the administration will work in good faith and not make their opinion that the budget is underfunded become a self-fulfilling prophecy,” he said. “I would hope that we’re going to make diligent efforts from the very beginning of this fiscal year to be conservative and frugal in our execution of this budget.”
Now Finizio must either sign the budget or, within 10 days, veto some or all of its line items and send it back to the City Council with his explanation for disapproval.
If six of the seven councilors agree with each other, the City Council can override the mayor’s veto and pass the budget.
The budget process began at the end of March, when, as part of his annual State of the City address, Finizio presented the City Council a proposed budget that would have necessitated a 12.54 percent increase in the city tax rate.
The council's Finance Committee reviewed the mayor’s proposed budget department by department and eventually approved a series of reductions proposed by Passero to trim about $3.1 million off the mayor’s plan.
The full council made further reductions over the course of the last five weeks before reaching the spending plan passed unanimously Wednesday night.
c.young@theday.com
Twitter: @ColinAYoung
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