By Doug Miller
It seems nobody can pin down whether or not the city is running a surplus.
City Manager Charles Theofan insists that a surplus of almost $3 million will be made available next month. Democratic councilmen Leonard Remo and Denis Kelly say it exists only semantically.
The debate began with a plan to move about $20,000 out of the city's contingency fund to cover the cost of hiring a new purchasing clerk. When Theofan was asked how much would remain in the fund after the transfer, he replied that it would be about $21,000. "But I'm anticipating an additional $2 million coming as a fund balance from last year," he said. The $2 million, he explained, would be the total remaining from the $2,874,817 he was told was left over from the previous budget.
Remo, and, in particular, Kelly, said they were having a problem accepting this. "Are they telling me there is $2.8 million of taxpayers' cash laying around somewhere?" Kelly asked. "If so, why did we have to raise all these [municipal] fees? Was it just bad accounting?"
The contingency fund was originally budgeted to have about $2.7 million in it when the fiscal year began July 1. That the money is essentially gone after four months, and before the winter storms for which some of the money is intended, was not sitting well with the Democrats. Most of the money, about $1.7 million, was used to cover the settlement of the new contract with the police union, which included retroactive salary increases that were not covered in the city budget's police line items.
The $2.8 million, Kelly said, sounds suspiciously like the Superblock money, which still has not arrived and could possibly never arrive, "given the history of the project," he said.
"I don't feel comfortable about any of this, by virtue of this one-shot revenue," Kelly said. "If we don't get it, we're facing a $3 million hole. If we do get it, we have to make up $3 million next year."
City Council President Jim Hennessy promised that the money existed, and that at the next meeting, on Dec. 6, it would be transferred into the contingency budget. He blasted Kelly, whose term ends Jan. 1 and who did not run for re-election, for trying to protect his own legacy. "It's been a six-month fight over political opportunism," Hennessy said. "Denis Kelly is a political opportunist, and he's going to do this until the day he's off the council and probably beyond. This is an effort by Denis to divert us from the fact that he was on the council when the whole mess began. This is his effort to avoid responsibility for it."
Hennessy pointed to the latest report from Moody's credit service, which maintained the city's weak BAA2 credit rating but said the existence of $2.87 million in reserves offered a glimmer of hope. "The confirmation of the BAA2 rating reflects Moody's analysis of the city's unaudited fiscal 2005 results that show a marked improvement over what was originally anticipated in February 2005," the report states. "Management is projecting that the city will have an operating surplus of approximately $5.19 million (unaudited) for fiscal 2005. As a result it is expected that the operating surplus will eliminate the deficit and leave the city with approximately $2.87 million in general fund reserves."
But another passage in the Moody's report, dated Oct. 28, seems to confirm Kelly's fears. "One point of potential vulnerability is the fact that the city budgeted $3 million in land sales that are expected to be effectuated in mid-fiscal 2006," the report states. "Moody's believes that this may be an aggressive assumption and that failure to recognize these revenues in the current fiscal year could challenge the city's ability to maintain structural balance at year end."
Paying for parking?
Theofan said Tuesday that he would like to study the feasibility of bringing parking meters to Long Beach.
A last-minute addition to the council agenda was a resolution authorizing Theofan to apply for a $100,000 grant from the New York Department of State, which is available to fund efforts to explore "long-term community viability."
Theofan stressed that he is not advocating for or against the meters, but said he is simply following up on several requests from merchants downtown, for whom the availability of parking is crucial. "I believe we currently have the only downtown in all of Nassau County without meters," he said.
Long Beach has had meters at least once in its history, and while it's debatable whether they contributed to the city's quality of life, they certainly contributed to its political history, which has often resembled Greek drama. The city's Democratic leader in 1964 was indicted as part of an investigation into kickbacks involving the meters. The charges were later dropped.
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