Maybe we’ll pay more attention to it this year, since the years of warnings we have been giving are finally becoming a problem. The more we borrow, the more interest we have to pay, and the more it impacts the capital budget. If only we had borrowed $10M less, we wouldn’t have that $1.3 million dollar of cuts we need to make.
Here’s the budget for the Capital Budget
9/2 – Introduce Executive Budget to Council. This is the first we see it.
9/8 & 9/9 – Board of Estimates Meetings. 4 business days to ask questions before we can ask them publicly.
9/16 – Public Hearing. This is a much better schedule for the public. They have a whole week to find out what the Board of Estimates decided, instead of 24 hours or less.
9/17 – Board of Estimates Amendments to Comptroller. The next day after the public hearing, we need to get our amendments in or find a Board of Estimates member to sponsor them for us. So, we don’t have long to fix anything that the public might raise. Especially since the amendments are due at noon.
9/22 – Board of Estimates Meeting (decisions) – So, weeks before the Operating Budget is out, the Capital Budget is scheduled to be done. I’m guessing that members of the Board of Estimates will not follow this schedule but wait to see the Operating Budget so that they can assess what kind of impacts the Capital Budget might have on the Operating Budget.
10/7 – Board of Estimates Report to Council. If they refer at Board of Estimates, the Council will likely do the same.
11/5 – Council Amendments to Comptroller. This is almost a month after we should have gotten the report from the Board of Estimates.
The rest of the schedule is the same as the Operating Budget. We usually take up the Capital Budget first, so depending upon how long the public testimony lasts, we will start the capital budget the first night and hopefully finish it the second night.
