Interesting City Council Meeting Tonight

Tonight's Salisbury City Council Meeting was very interesting and the hot issue was Health Insurance for the City Council. Unfortunately, Councilwoman Debbie Campbell was not present to contribute to the discussion due to being under the weather.

Here is how the voting went on the agenda.

Adoption of Agenda - Passed Unanimously (4-0)

Consent Agenda - Passed Unanimously (4-0)
May 11, 2009 Minutes

• Resolution No. 1785 - appointment of Melanie L. Perreault to the Historic District Commission.
• Resolution No. 1786 - appointment of Muir Boda (yours truly) to the Recycling Advisory Committee.
• Resolution No. 1787 - reappointment of City Councilwoman Debbie Campbell as Council member on the PAC-14 Board of Directors.

Award of Bids - Passed Unanimously (4-0)

• American Paving Corporation awarded contract to "furnish, deliver, and apply bituminous concrete paving on variety of city streets" for $175,898.50. There is also a clause that may require more or less funds depending on market price of asphalt.

FY10 Budget -

• Resolution No. 1779 - adoption of water and sewer rates. This increased water and sewer rates. Passed Unanimously (4-0).

• Ordinance No. 2078 for 2nd reading - adoption of FY10 budget. Passed Unanimously (4-0).

• To break this out a little, there was discussion on exhibit A and the ordinance stated "AND BE IT FURTHER ORDAINED by the Salisbury City Council that these summary amounts shall be spent under the limitations of the attached list herein known as the FY 10 Budget Items Adjusted by Council Exhibit Awhether the amounts are added deleted reduced or increased."

This is the Council's changes to the Mayor's Proposed Budget. The Council had reached consensus on every item with the exception of Health Insurance for the City Council at a cost of $21,429.00 that was not in the submitted budget by former Mayor Barrie Tilghman. On Friday, May 22, 2009, Mayor Ireton said he was going to submit corrections to the budget by adding this item back. He was citing historical precedent by previous Mayors who had added items back into budgets.

City Council Vice-President Gary Comegys offered an amendment that would officially place this item in the budget. By voting "NO" Council Members would be removing Health Insurance from the budget. Mr. Comegys and Mrs. Shields voted "AYE" and Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Cohen voted "NAY", the amendment failed because there was a tie. If City Councilwoman Campbell had been present and voted "NAY", they would have removed Health Insurance from Exhibit A.

Over thirty minutes of discussion on this issue, they finally voted and passed the FY10 Budget, with City Council Health Insurance. The other issue that rose out of this is there was no reduction in the Tax Rate Percentile to offset the increase of the Phase In Assessment property value, essentially raising property taxes.

• Resolution No. 1784 - Passed Unanimously (4-0). Approved the transfer of several small pieces of land to SHA for some work that needs to be done on the Rt. 13 Bridge that crosses Rt. 50. One piece will be transferred back to the city once the work is done.

City Councilwoman Terry Cohen offered an amendment to switch from a Program/Performance Budget to a Line Item Budget. There was no second so the motion failed.

Mrs. Cohen also made another motion that did get seconded and passed. It changed a particular Resolution into an Ordinance, I didn't catch the number. It did pass unanimously.

I have several concerns about the FY10 budget and a couple of other issues, the health insurance is one, that I will post about later this week.