Some thoughts on Tuesday's passage of the city's 2006-2007 budget:

Cut out?

Last week, when several amendments to the budget proposed by city manager John Salomone were put on hold because councilor David Dempsey was upset about the process that would have been used to agree to amendments, including his landfill plan, the city manager pushed for a special meeting. The reasoning for doing so was that he was rightfully concerned that the city council was coming dangerously close to the drop dead deadline of Monday, June 19, to pass a budget.

The plan, as put forward, at least intimated, that only budget amendments would be considered at this special meeting. There was no indication of an overall budget vote. Isn't it convenient that a budget, after weeks of controversy, was approved, not at a regular Thursday night meeting, but in a sparsely attended special session?

You can't watch

If you want to watch Tuesday's session on cable tonight, you're out of luck. City staff didn't make arrangements for having the special session taped for broadcast. Arrangements to televise have been made, in the past, for similar short notice special sessions, according to one city official. One might think this was a convenient way for city officials to avoid having the public see members of city council raise taxes and water rates. Or it may have been just a way to avoid having on tape another possible explosive debate on the budget, as occurred last week.

A whimper

With all the nonsense about massive layoffs and a tax increase, in the end the budget ended with a whimper. The night before this budget was released, this column posed the following question on whether the budget was: a document that logically looks at all budget options or a document that scares the heck out of everyone to get city council to pass a large tax hike or drain the city's reserves, an act of tremendous fiscal irresponsibility.

The next controversy

Now that the budget process has ended, want a prediction of what the next city hall controversy will be? Expect summer hours and council meeting times to be the next big issue.

With all the debate over summer hours last year, some officials are trying to spin that it will take an “official” vote to reverse this policy, not a vote to put them in place for this coming year, as has been past practice. The idea being that it will be tougher to get three votes to reverse the assumed “policy” than politically easier to get three votes to go to summer hours.

Cosentino is a former mayor of Auburn and can be e-mailed at cozguytho@aol.com