Council to deal with vacant billets

During the budget works session this morning, council members ran into issues with money being moved around in complicated ways. While discussing billets within the payroll, the council has decided to look into the ones that have been unfilled and to understand where that money is being spent. Issues were presented with some part-time employees being paid full-time wages, and Councilman Weston Lindemann of Ward 5 says some employees were even hired outside of their pay band. The council plans to look into billets that have been unfilled for over a year and to move that money to their legislative fund to where the council has more control over how it gets spent, or simply cut it out of the budget all together and put that money back towards their reserves.

“It makes it impossible or at least very difficult for the city council to understand where the money is being spent. When we pass this budget, its going to be based on what we expect to be real numbers. When you have a part-time budget, we expect them to spend only that amount for part-time. Instead what’s happened is, they’re moving money around in complicated ways to pay people more money and that’s the type of thing we have to put more controls on in the system to prevent that from happening again,” says Lindemann.

The council plans to look into all part-time positions and what they're getting paid, in the near future.