City Council Candidates Discuss Issue 9: Multi-year budgets
The PCA posed a series of 10 questions to candidates for the Piedmont City Council in the upcoming election on February 7. Following are the candidates’ entire responses to question #9:
The MTRC recommends multi-year planning, would you want to start with the 2012-13 budget?
Robert McBain, City Council Candidate, response:
As a member of the MTRC, I supported multi-year planning. I suggest this begins this year. The MTRC recommended five year planning. I recommend and encourage the City take constructive and incremental steps. A three year plan, for instance, would be a good start. Let’s not allow form to triumph over substance. A three year plan would be a constructive and material improvement. In time, with better forecasting, we will have accurate and more meaningful results. Let’s get good empirically based numbers that are grounded on reasonable assumptions.
Tim Rood, City Council Candidate, response:
Absolutely. The Council should have acted in September, when it received the MTRC report, to begin the process of appointing the recommended Municipal Finance Review Committee in order to allow it to participate in the mid-year budget review. Piedmont has a great wealth of professional knowledge to draw upon in its citizenry, and there are doubtless many Piedmonters who are able and willing to lend their expertise to this committee. I am very concerned by the lack of action to date from the Council to implement these crucial recommendations, now four months after receiving them.
Margaret Fujioka, City Council Candidate, response:
I support multi-year planning and such planning should begin with the FY 2012-13 budget, if feasible.
With respect to Councilmember Fujioka’s qualifier, “if feasible,” I can assure her that it is. As someone who was a budget director in the public sector for a quarter century, I can say without hesitation that every organization I worked for did multi-year budget planning. So how about dropping the qualifier and just say that she is committed to having it happen this year. Period. We need members of the Council who will express firm commitments, not avoid them.