City budget Public entitled to details
Uniontown City Councilman Bob Cerjanic is doing the public a disservice by keeping secret the amount that occupational taxes and sewage rates will be hiked. City council on Monday approved a $6.5 million tentative budget during a special meeting. Cerjanic, as director of accounts and finances, agreed following the meeting to sit down with reporters to explain the numbers. Only he wasn’t sharing much.
Cerjanic noted that both fees will rise but he declined to give any particulars. Nor were copies of the budget immediately made available to review. Further, the councilman indicated to reporters that a line-item budget wouldn’t be forthcoming.
Someone – perhaps the city solicitor – needs to tell Cerjanic and that city officials must make the budget available for inspection by the public. That is the reason that the law requires a municipality to introduce a tentative plan, advertise its existence and allow for time to elapse so that the public can review and comment on how the government intends to spend its money.
During the interim the numbers can still be tweaked and proposed tax hikes adjusted. However, if the city knows that it will not raise property taxes, as Cerjanic has said, and that it will hike sewage fees and the occupational privilege tax, then it must have played with some numbers. He wouldn’t budge under repeated questioning as to how much more people will pay for the privilege of working in the city or how much more people will pay on their sewage bills.
Cerjanic said the city planned to take advantage of recently passed legislation, which was part of the Pittsburgh financial bailout, allowing municipalities to annually charge $52 instead of $10 for the occupational privilege tax. Whether it will be $52 or something less, he isn’t saying.
Nor did he divulge an estimated figure for sewage customers to begin paying millions in loans to expand the treatment plant. Debt for the sewerage system will increase from $60,000 a month to $115,000 a month. Surely, someone in the city has already done the math to come up with an estimated cost to customers. They are entitled to know.
The councilman said the city will end this fiscal year in the black, but he did not disclose how much of a reserve fund is projected, nor would he say how much, if any, the city plans to pad this cushion in 2005.
His remarks that the city will continue to provide the police, fire, sanitation, street, sewage and electrical services at the same level indicates that no layoffs are anticipated. But, it fails to speak to whether the spending plan includes hiring more personnel, especially in light of recent discussions about expanding the police department.
Cerjanic said council might discuss the numbers further during its next meeting scheduled for Dec. 7. That is the least council can do. It must also make a line item budget available, detailing revenues and expenditures for the general fund and every other fund under its control.
The public is entitled to scrutinize those funds to understand fully the costs of running city government. There is no reason to keep this information secreted away.