Two vetoes proposed by Mayor Eddie Sundquist needs to be overridden shortly by the Metropolis Council on Monday — a $6,500 reduce to the mayor’s journey and training price range and a $3,000 reduce to the Jamestown City Renewal Company.
It’s affordable to ask why Sundquist, in his third yr as mayor, wants an even bigger journey and training price range than a predecessor who served 20 years in workplace. Two traces within the price range deal with journey and dues for conferences and training, and the 2 traces whole $24,500. Evaluate that with the $11,056 former Mayor Sam Teresi spent on the identical two line gadgets within the metropolis’s 2020 price range.
One purpose is the town’s newly renewed membership within the Nationwide League of Cities, of which Sundquist was just lately named a board member. That membership comes at a value of $3,508 a yr along with journey prices to larger cities across the nation for conferences and occasions. There’s a purpose the town ended its affiliation with the NLC — metropolis officers determined on the time the nationwide group didn’t present sufficient bang for the town’s buck.
Evaluate Natonal League of Cities membership prices to the journey and training price range of former Mayor Sam Teresi, who ascended to a management place within the New York Convention of Mayors, a corporation that comes with a a dearer membership price however less expensive journey to cities in New York state.
Considered in that historic gentle, the council’s reduce of the journey and training price range by $6,500 is affordable contemplating points with the manager price range proposed by Sundquist’s created an surprising $500,000 in cuts that had been essential to deliver the price range plan into stability.
Likewise a $3,000 reduce to the town’s contract with the Jamestown City Renewal Company is much from a deadly blow to the town’s work on housing, particularly when contemplating the reduce isn’t a lower from the town’s contribution to JURA in 2022. Slightly, the reduce merely decreases the rise within the metropolis’s contribution to JURA. And people who worry the $3,000 reduce will hurt the council’s work to deal with the homeless through the chilly winter months are equally unfounded, in our view, given the truth that funding for homeless packages is coming from state and federal sources, not native tax {dollars}.
Each vetoes, in our opinion, needs to be overridden by the council.
