Dear Editor:
I don’t think Mayor Cunningham would be as tardy and negligent with his own family budget as he is with the taxpayer funded Jersey City budget. Last year he submitted his budget proposal for the City five months late, which cost the City an extra $200,000 a month because of the delay. This year we are two-thirds through the current budget which the Mayor has just submitted and which was due last July. What that means is that the City Council has to review the Mayor’s recently submitted budget whose finances have been substantially expanded for months by the Mayor without City Council approval. Mayor Cunningham’s spending has increased Jersey City’s present budget to $374,000,000 a $14 million increase over the previous year’s budget. I can only compare this situation to newlyweds discussing their budget soon after the honeymoon.
One newlywed states to his/her spouse, “We need to discuss how we’ll budget the $20,000 we received in wedding gifts” and the spouse answers, “Oh, I just put half of that down on a new Lexus last week.”
The response, “How could you do such a thing without asking me and with all the other bills we have?” The spouse answers, “No problem, I just had a bank draw up a 30 year refinance plan on the house your parents bought us.”
So the City Council has to review a budget which has been 66 percent spent and contracted out and a proposed refinancing plan structured to cover the present budget while increasing city debt, neither of which the City Council was consulted on in the planning stage. It goes without saying that Mayor Cunningham’s unwillingness to consult with the elected Council members when planning use of taxpayer monies has resulted in a debacle that magnifies Jersey City’s financial woes. The City Council is again responsible for rectifying the Mayor’s irresponsibility.
The Council has rejected the Mayor’s refinance plan and the plan’s ballooning effect on City debt. Mayor Cunningham now wants to raise taxes $200.00 per $100,000 assessed property value based on the Mayor’s $125 million tax levy figures. After a review by the City Council Budget Committee, headed by Councilman Gaughan, the committee determined that the taxpayers should not take such a hit; so the committee reduced the Mayor’s proposal to a more tolerable $100 increase based on a more sensible estimated tax levy figure of $116 million. Considering the Council’s continuing efforts, there is a possibility that the City Council could conceivably come up with a budget with no tax increase.
The City Council also researched and corrected Mayor Cunningham’s statement that last year’s surplus could not legally be used in its entirety for this year’s expenditures. The Council found that no such limits exist. Councilman Maldonado also stated that if the Jersey City Redevelopment Agency closed on the Medical Center sale to Metrovest, it could bring in approximately $14 million or more to be used towards the budget. The Mayor must insist that the closing take place immediately.
Mayor Cunningham could be less errant in his financial decisions if he understood that better decisions would result if he drew upon the vast knowledge and experience of the elected City Council members. The Mayor must learn that tardiness in presenting the budget and “eleventh-hour” problem-solving are not grounds for good economics.
Mayor Cunningham, it’s time to cooperate with the elected City Council and deliver a fair, less burdensome budget to the hard-working Citizens of our City. Ban those special-interest consultants from your office, get rid of the “Campaign 2005” mentality when you’re making decisions, ask your business advisor to operate with less dependency on expensive bank and corporate consultants, and get back to your office and come up with more than just one non-flexible financial plan. Thus far you have presented one plan, and your only backup plan is to threaten an exorbitant tax hike and massive layoffs.
L. Harvey Smith
Council President