UPDATE: Should Bloomingdale Seek Public Input on Budget?

While Councilman Ray Yazdi has pledged to bring transparency to  budget process, he does not feel that the council's Budget Committee meetings should be fully open to the public as he said it may discourage department heads and committee members from speaking freely about revenue-gaining ideas.

Yazdi responded to a suggestion by Councilwoman Linda Shortman at Tuesday's borough council meeting to advertise the meetings and invite the public to attend and provide input during the process of crafting the municipal budget. She said she felt that hearing the department heads speak about their budgetary needs and ideas for helping reduce costs would not only serve to educate the public but also boost public perception of the borough's administrators.

"(The public) would gain more respect for what they do, what they ask for and their process," she said.

But Yazdi felt otherwise and referenced a committee meeting where Chief Joe Borrell came forward with ideas for gaining revenue that Yazdi felt the chief might otherwise not have spoken about with the media or members of the public in the room.

"I don't want to put our professionals in the direct line of questioning by the public," Yazdi said.

Yazdi said on March 14 that he would like the public to be involved in the budgeting process but after the department heads have had the opportunity to meet with the committee members in private. According to the suggestion, Yazdi said he felt that the public would not have been able to ask questions and he would prefer the budget committee entertain public input in a separate form of meetings after the budget has been drafted.

Borough Attorney Fred Semrau confirmed that if the council members on the committee are the only council members who are meeting and not the full council, advertising would not be necessary since there would not be a quorum. Yazdi felt that Shortman's suggestion was politically-motivated and he implied that it was a ploy to have former Councilwoman Linda Huntley involved in the budget process.

In January, the council majority had requested that Huntley be allowed to serve on the budget committee, but after members of the public argued against the measure, Councilman Glenn Schiffman told the governing body at the Feb. 21 meeting that the majority was dropping their request. Shortman denied that her suggestion had anything to do with politics or Huntley's involvement with the process.

"You are constantly telling us you want to work as a team and then you sit up here and cry politics," she said to Yazdi.

Also during the discussion about the Budget Committee, Yazdi, the committee's chairman, questioned why Councilwoman Jo-Ann Pituch had requested financial documents from the borough in regards to the budget without notifying the rest of the committee. Pituch commented that she felt Yazdi was not respecting her during committee meetings and attempted to motion to have him removed as chairman, although Semrau noted that since chairmanship is a mayoral appointment with the consent of the council, the council members could not make such a motion.

"Well it's a shame, because your butt would have been off," Pituch told Yazdi.

Councilman John D'Amato reminded the council of the chain of command and said he felt that the entire committee should be notified of requests for documentation. He also asked that the council members discontinue the back-and-forth arguments and instead, focus on accomplishing initiatives for the benefit of the borough.

"This has got to stop on all ends," he said. "We've been here three months and we've accomplished, in my eyes, nothing."