ANOTHER Workshop on Reduction of City Manager Spending Limits

Or is this simply a delay tactic?  In Tuesday night's City Council Meeting, Councilman Don Kimsey proposed to change the City Manager's authorized spending limit without council approval from $10,000, down to $5.000.  A workshop was already held to discuss this issue on October 4th, 2010.  After an hour and a half of discussion, Mayor Joe LaCascia was trying to simplify issues by saying, "We just need to plug in your new dollar amount here," when talking about how to modify the spending limits.  By the sounds of it, that is what Councilman Don Kimsey was attempting to do at Tuesday's, Oct. 12th meeting.

Based on discussions from the workshop on the 4th, the main hesitation other council members have with any reduction in spending limits is that it will tie the hands of the City Manager to the point where there will be delays in getting decisions made and bills paid until Council Members can meet and decide on items that exceed the new limits.  Mr. Kimsey asked Pamela Lawson, the City's Finance Administrator, Tuesday night how many instances come up in excess of $5,000 on a regular basis that are not already approved by contract or budget.  She stated that there were essentially none.  Ms. Lawson sited a handful of line items in the last month that exceeded the suggested $5,000 limit, but all of the items mentioned were payments made based on previously agreed contracts.

At the end of the discussion of the topic at Tuesday night's meeting, the Mayor did not want to take a vote on the suggested new lower spending limit.  Instead, he recommended that another workshop on the issue be planned so it can be discussed in further detail.   He stressed that he did not want it to result in any unexpected consequences.  The date of this workshop will be announced later.

Here is an article that appeared in the Ledger on October 11th on this same issue: Polk City Manager's Spending Challenged by Councilman

and another from October 13th on the discussions from Tuesday's meeting.  Effort to Reign In Polk City's Spending Put Off