Fuel For Thought: Readers and City Manager React to Gas Post

In response to our post on fuel consumption and the City budget, we received two signed comments that raised interesting points or questions that warrant more discussion:

First, we agree with Mark that the main point of our post was to suggest that the City’s published budget is virtually impossible to follow, that the numbers just didn’t seem to add up, for whatever reason.

Our attention was first drawn to line items relating to fuel consumption (revenue and expenses) when the City announced that by mid-year 2008, the City had used up all of its allocation for fuel, thanks to a spike in the price of gas. Council budgeted for 2009 and then the price of gas went way down. Wouldn’t that create a budget surplus and effect the budgeting for 2010?

Every member of the public has the right to read the city budget, in its entirety, and to view the records that support the various budget line items. We did just that, and found the documents to be cumbersome and unnecessarily vague when it comes to reconciling various line items.

Yet, Mark goes on to state, and, again, we agree, that a reader who is unfamiliar with general municipal operations might get the impression that we were suggesting “something funny” is going on. That must be what happened when some Councilors read the post and accused Councilor Augustine of attacking staff “from the bushes.” Not only was the post not an attack on City staff—we went out of our way to express how cooperative staff had been-but we’re not sure how a signed blog entry on the internet could be more public: if there was anyone hiding in the bushes it wasn’t us. So rather than indulging those who like to jump to conclusions, we want to take some time to respond to the real questions raised by our readers, who apparently, like Mark, understand general municipal operations.

Tom also concluded that we were not claiming to have “hit on some kind of conspiracy, but a system of payment and accounting that was set up years ago and never adjusted.” There is value, he states—and we agree-in looking at these systems closely to make sure that what City government is doing today meets the City’s current needs, rather than simply doing things ‘as we’ve always done them.’

We point out that after the post appeared, the City Manager drafted a memo to Council
addressing the question of apparent discrepancies in the City’s published budget.(We’re not sure if it was his own response to our post or a response to other Councilors who may have read the post and asked for an explanation.) Our post had been on revenue and expenditures for 2006 and 2007, but the City Manager addressed figures for 2008, so we’re not sure how that clears things up. Also, in the same memo, he indicates that in order to reconcile figures for 2008 he had to use a “figure different than the 2008 figure represented in the budget documents,” so, actually, he’s acknowledging the same problem: the numbers don’t add up in the published budget documents. Again, he’s not exposing some conspiracy, but commenting on the numbers generated by the accounting system that’s in place.

Mark’s comment also addressed outside agency use of City fuel. While we don’t disagree that support of critical agencies is a nice thing for the City to engage in, we cannot agree with the implication that the City must do this, or should continue to provide gasoline at cost. Consider this: if the City purchases gasoline from the state contract at $2/gallon and the price at the pump is $3.50/gallon, for example, that is a significant savings for any agency that is billed at cost. But the City incurs a cost to maintain the gas station facility, to generate the bills and do the associated accounting. Even if the City were to charge a $.50/gallon surcharge, the agencies would still see a great benefit and the City would see some actual revenue to cover those costs. There is the additional question of whether the Geneva Housing Authority, which already receives substantial subsidies from the City for services that might not be wholly consistent with the City’s strategic imperatives, should receive additional City assistance for their County-wide operation.

The question of outside agency gas usage has been raised on the floor of City Council before, but never taken up for discussion. We hope that it will be now, given the City’s tight budget constraints.

And that leads us to the last question or concern that our post generated, both on the blog and at the most recent televised Council meeting. Our readers say that Councilors should not have to file a FOIL request to speak to a department head or to receive records. It seems that many on Council share this view, but as we will discuss in an upcoming post, the standing policy prohibits that—as one of our first posts back in 2007 discussed. So, perhaps our post raised yet another ‘old system’ that’s in need of a change.