On October 22, 2013, Republican-controlled City Council unanimously approved Resolution R-94-13 (aka Bill R-13-10-18), which approved the budget for the Downtown Improvement District, as presented by County Councilman and DID President, Bill Brown. At that time, City Council unanimously approved a spending package of $150,000 ($100,000 for ??? and $50,000 for Downtown “Infrastructure”) Keep in mind that this measure was passed unanimously by all 9 members. DID, which is really a subsidiary of the Downtown Development Trust (those fine folks who go around downtown scooping at private properties for inflated prices), gets their funding from tax assessments ($300,000), City Council ($150,000) and County Council/County Commissioners ($50,000). This means that DID gets 30% of its funding from City Council. Now fast forward to Tuesday, March 25th---6 months after the approval of DID’s budget: City council votes on giving DID $150,000, with only Republican Marty Bender voting against the measure. But wait— How does one have a plan for a budget when the appropriations haven’t been passed? To me….and someone, please correct me if I’m wrong here….this means DID plans on how its going to spend its money even before it gets approval for the allocation of that money. This sort of begs the question of why didn’t City Council give approval to appropriate the $150,000 at the time it approved the budget? The City’s budget had already been passed by that point, so they could have done so. This really sets the stage for some procedural confusion as well as some serious “sloppy accounting.”
Posted on: Fri, 28 Mar 2014 04:50:59 +0000
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