Paperwork malfunction
After a handful of talking-over-each other meetings, city council passed the budget Tuesday night with zero debate or discussion.
And they adopted it without even having the final budget numbers in black and white in front of them, the city manager says.
Through a clerical snafu, council didn't get the copy of the budget resolution being proposed by city staff.
No one asked to see it, apparently because they were informed about any last minute changes to the budget by the city manager's office the day before. Questions about the legitimacy of the adoption were raised after the fact.
"It isn't ideal government craft, and it ain’t the way we normally do things," City Manager Mitchell Johnson said.
Johnson called the UNC School of Government to double check. He was assured the vote was OK, since council was involved in the budget process.
By not questioning anything Tuesday night, Council members were trying to keep a promise to each other to NOT raise any issues that had been hashed and rehashed, Councilman Mike Barber said. Councilwoman Sandra Anderson Groat was lobbying for a 9 to 0 budget adoption, which she nearly got.
"We didn’t want the budget to unravel,” Barber said.
Technically, council legally adopted the budget. But next week they are going to adopt it again, with all the paperwork in order and the tax rate outlined before them.
Due to recent automated spamming attacks on our blogs, we are temporarily requiring commenters to authenticate themselves via TypeKey® before posting comments to any News & Record blog in order to prevent denials of service. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.