Snellville to reconsider budget after concerns about possible errors

Snellville Mayor Kelly Kautz has nullified the city's recently approved budget, warning that procedural and financial errors make immediate revisions necessary to avoid exhausting remaining funds in the previous year's spending plan.

Kautz has submitted another budget proposal for consideration at the City Council meeting Monday. If the council — which rejected the mayor's budget June 29 in favor of an amended version with about $500,000 in fewer expenses — fails to approve the measure, Kautz said Snellville may be unable to meet its financial obligations by the end of the month.

That means the city wouldn't be able to afford things like sidewalk repairs, she said, and city employees could miss paychecks.

"We must take care of this right away," Kautz said Friday. "It could possibly put city operations at a standstill."

Mayor Pro Tem Tom Witts, who pushed for the amended budget at the previous meeting, said Kautz is exaggerating the extent of the potential consequences. Witts said he wants to lower property taxes and thinks Kautz's latest budget proposal comes close to doing that.

"Basically we're just cleaning up the details," he said. "The fact is [Kautz] is throwing smoke and mirrors out there."

Snellville's $9.6 million budget for fiscal year 2013, which started July 1, was approved by Witts and three other council members who have regularly sided against Kautz since they all took office in November. The budget came in about a half-million dollars less than the $10.1 million spending plan submitted by Kautz and the city staff.

Much of the difference between the budgets came from the removal of $426,000 targeted for a road project through the Livable Centers Initiative (LCI), which awards planning grants. Witts said he didn't include those funds because he believed Snellville should pay for that project with money — $1.7 million — received from Gwinnett County in March as part of a settlement over the cost of services.

Kautz has expressed concerns about potentially exposing the city to an investigation over improper financial practices. She said some of the changes also included a pay cut for city employees instead of an expected 1 percent pay raise.

Jan Burke, the city's controller, told the council she could not support the amended budget and said exclusion of the LCI funds and $16,900 for repairs to Lakeside Pavilion could be considered a "material misstatement."

Kautz decided to invalidate the budget by citing a provision under Robert's Rules of Order, which contains rules for deliberative bodies. She said Witts' budget proposal was improperly submitted and that he failed to include a written version.

Witts responded: "She chairs the council meetings. If it was an improper motion, it was improper on her part."