Out of the loop
To effectively run a city the size of Westbrook, it’s important
the administration and the City Council are on the same page.
That’s why it was disappointing Monday night to learn the
administration planned to use just over $540,000 to help pay off
debt from downtown redevelopment projects without allowing the full City Council to vote on it first.
On Monday night, the council voted to use the money from the 2004 sale of the old Cumberland Mills police station and the Forest Street School to help pay the price for downtown improvements. But the vote came after the city already transferred the money from one
internal account to another.
The administration wasn’t wrong in trying to find a way to reduce the city’s debt without putting any additional burden on taxpayers, but the council should have had the chance to weigh in on the plan first.
“It’s very troubling and disturbing to me that this could have
happened, given the magnitude of the amount of money,” said Councilor Drew Gattine. “There was a debt that needed to be paid, but it’s the council’s decision by majority vote how that debt is paid.”
Gattine is right. The council has to sign off on all spending over $3,000, and it seems using more than $500,000 to pay off
city debt would definitely qualify for council oversight.
Communication between the council and the administration has been a problem in Westbrook in the past, and not just limited to the current administration and the current council.
In 2002, the previous administration promised developer Tim Flannery 90 spaces in the CVS parking lot off William Clarke Drive as part of the deal to bring Disability RMS to the city. That agreement, which was done without council approval, did not come to light until early 2005.
Unlike that incident regarding the parking spaces, the administration did bring this proposal to use the money from the sale of the buildings to the council.
About a year ago, the administration brought the issue before the
council’s Finance Committee. At that time, the committee voted to
send the question on to the full council for a vote, but the matter
never made it to onto a council agenda.
To his credit, City Administrator Jerre Bryant took the blame. “The failure for this item to appear on a City Council agenda was an inadvertent oversight and, as city administrator, I accept full responsibility for that omission,” said Bryant.
To be fair, there has been no accusations that anything improper was done with the money. In fact, the administration never wrote a check and the money hasn’t actually been spent. It was just moved from one account to another.
The city incurred the debt in an attempt to redevelop downtown, and when revenues fell short of projections, the city needed to pay off the debt somehow. But the administration should have gone through proper channels before looking to use that money.
After all, the money doesn’t belong to the administration, it’s the
taxpayers’ money and they deserve the right, through their elected
officials, to have a say in how it is spent.
Mike Higgins, assistant editor
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