Hyattsville Sets Budget Proposal Deadline

The Hyattsville City Council voted last night to require Mayor Marc Tartaro and city administrators to produce a detailed budget proposal by the end of the month. 

The measure passed nine to zero, with Mayor Marc Tartaro abstaining from the vote. Council Member Joseph Solomon (Ward 5) was absent from the meeting, which saw the city council briefed on the proposed budgets for the Department of Community and Economic Development, the Department of Community Services, and a discussion of the city's retiree health care benefit liability. 

According to Council President Candace Hollingsworth (Ward 1), the move to mandate a deadline for a more detailed budget came because members of the city council did not feel they had enough information to proceed with further substantive discussions of the city's finances over the next fiscal year. 

"Now it's a matter of understanding the depth of cuts in individual departments, and the level of strain we put on the budget" to pay for the retiree health care liability and other city spending, said Hollingsworth in an interview after last night's council meeting. 

Tartaro was hoping to release a detailed budget in early June, and said that he has tried to be as transparent as possible in crafting the proposed budget. 

"The budget isn't done, and additional work needs to be done on it," said Tartaro in an interview last night. 

Part of that "additional work", according to Tartaro, is finding a way to sensibly reduce the amount of money the city will have to pay to fund current and future retiree health care benefits.

"They will get a document that's in process," said Tartaro. "It's an incredible amount of work for essentially one person, but that's their will."

A lack of budget information was a central objection raised by city  council members who, in April, delayed approving a measure which would have kept the city's real property tax rate at the same level it has stood since 2005, at 63 cents per $100 of assessed property value. 

"We didn't want to vote on the tax rate until we knew what the plan was for the city with our finances," said Hollingsworth after last night's meeting. On "We now have to live with that."