Fortner’s fortitude

Bob and Nancy Fortner and their government budget-watching group, the Bainbridge Resource Group, are heroes on both sides of the island’s political aisle this week. Bob Fortner submitted a comment at yesterday’s 11th hour City Hall budget meeting, in which he decried the administration’s “gamesmanship not statesmanship.” The uber-liberal Bainbridge Island Postscript, as well as the hard right Shining City Media and property rights activist Gary Tripp, reprinted his comments in their postings/emails today. You can read his entire letter on the Postscript here.

Fortner noted several inexplicable lapses in the administration’s budget procedures leading up to the Council’s refusal to pass the 2008 City budget and Capital Facilities Plan.

Noting that the budget presented to Council omitted the policies and assumptions upon which it was based, he wrote, “When Council sought that information and the public submitted questions all were told there simply was not enough time to provide the answers, mostly noting staff was too busy. Yet, the Council and the public were treated to at least two major revisions during the information gathering phase of budget hearings. Apparently the workshop organized by the Mayor which took senior staff away for a total of 5 full days during the most crucial period of budget deliberations was deemed of higher priority.”

Fortner ascribed the communication problems at City Hall (which I wrote about last week) in part to the “persistent withholding of relevant information” by the administration. Especially disconcerting to Fortner was last week’s confounding development at the Council meeting, when it turned out that the City’s capital projects costs were actually $2.5 million more than the Council had been led to believe.

“The ’surprise’ came at the beginning of the meeting, though apparently the ‘oversight and baseline change’ were known as early as the previous Monday and no one saw the necessity or value of passing that discovery along to council in advance of the wasteful Wednesday meeting,” Fortner wrote.

Some of his most damning remarks were directed toward the consulting and PR fees already incurred to launch Winslow Tomorrow (totals of which have never been made public). He wrote:

“Despite evidence of the accumulating problems, especially the need for more debt, associated with prior years spending sprees, Administration has continued to push for larger and larger amounts of capital spending particularly on projects, studies and public relations related to WT. Untold, but consequential, amounts have been spent thus far without a public accounting of those costs, all while additional funds are sought. Administration supported policy decisions by staff, not council, to remove LID funding as a source for the WT Streetscape Project, rather than present that as an option to the council and public though it was recommended by the much lauded WT Congress.”

Fortner went so far as to characterize annual capital allocations to Public Works as “an internal ‘Ponzi Scheme’ that defies penetration and accountability.”

“Public Works commonly reorders council mandated priorities, again without collaboration or consent,” he wrote, calling on the Council to rescind the mayor’s authority to sign contracts without Council approval until fiscal stability is restored.

The lack of communication–deliberate or not–with the Council and the public is becoming the administration’s Achilles Heel. Tomorrow night’s extra Council meeting, scheduled to try to pass the budget and the CFP, might well be a Council-admin-citizen showdown. Tune in on BITV.