It’s no secret that budget meetings are typically better attended than regular government meetings, especially when there’s a proposed tax increase. At Signal Mountain Town Council’s last budget meeting, which ended with the passing of a 15-cent tax increase, some of the residents crowded into the room took issue with what they said was a secret budgeting process.
“It seems like there’s been a lack of information available to us as citizens,” George Davenport told council members at that time.
Resident Tom Francescon suggested giving citizens the chance to go through the town’s finances and budget to hopefully find other ways to cut. Citizen Rick Morris requested that town financial and budget documents be posted on the town’s website.
At the urging of Councilman Bill Wallace, the town is considering its options for publicly posting such information. In the meantime, Town Manager Honna Rogers noted that citizens are always welcome to come into Town Hall to look over documents and ask questions, and that they always have been.
“It’s kind of troublesome when folks think it’s been a secret process,” Mayor Bill Lusk said at the most recent council workshop. He then repeated the suggestion he had made at the time of the budget passing, to create a finance subcommittee of qualified and interested citizens.
“I think you have a committee of the public right here,” Rogers said, motioning to the four Town Council members around the table. Councilman Dick Gee was absent.
“I think you have two very talented people [Rogers and Finance Director Mark Johnson] and you have a talented staff that works on [budgeting],” she continued. “To me, having an extra committee makes me feel like you don’t have confidence in your staff. And as much as we go through [the budget] with you all already, I can’t imagine spending extra hours than what we already do.”
Noah Long, who was the only citizen in attendance at the 9 a.m. workshop, suggested changing the traditional morning meeting times of budget workshops in particular. Council workshops, which occur monthly, are where much of the discussion and sometimes decision making is done, especially as related to the budget, which usually requires several hours-long workshops.
As always, they are open to the public.
Rogers said changing the times did not help change the level of public participation in the past.
“That’s the first time anybody’s ever brought that up; it’s because we had a tax increase,” Vice Mayor Susan Robertson said in regards to the suggestion of a citizen subcommittee and explicit solicitation of public participation. “These people in the [budget] meeting didn’t show up in five years, then suddenly they want to do the budget for us.”
Rogers said she hopes to get budget information for the past several years posted on the website under the ‘government’ tab within the next few weeks.
Finance reports will likely follow the same quarterly schedule that council members receive them, and will probably start in the next few months, following the recent Aug. 1 start of this fiscal year, Rogers said.