Selma Mayor James Perkins Jr. said he’ll ask the Selma City Council to carry over this year’s budget into the next fiscal year so the new administration and council can make their own decisions about spending.
Perkins called a meeting with the city council for late Friday afternoon (June 20) to go over some issues with the city council, but only City Councilman Atkin Jemison attended. The mayor reviewed the issues he wanted to present to the city council for the media and the Facebook Live audience.
The city’s fiscal year starts on Oct. 1, and the city council and the mayor’s office usually start working on the budget in the summer. Perkins said that he would “like to skip the dance” of preparing a budget for next year so that the new mayor and council, whomever they might be, can write their own budget.
The city council would have to approve a continuing resolution that would carry over the current budget into next year. State law requires that if a city has a budget, it must be approved before the fiscal year starts on Oct. 1.
“The next administration and mayor may want something different,” Perkins said. “This is a courtesy process to comply with the law to have a budget passed and giving the next administration the opportunity to come in and prepare their own budget.”
Perkins said he also planned to ask city council members to send any work requests through city department heads rather than contracting with vendors on their own. Perkins said overseeing contracts is “a requirement” of his job as mayor.
“Whenever an individual council member is no longer on the bench” during a city council meeting, “they become a citizen just like any other citizen,” Perkins said. As a private citizen, city council members are not empowered to select vendors or negotiate contracts, he said.
City Attorney Major Madison Jr. read several state statutes that he and Perkins said backed up that position. Madison said expending funds more than $30,000 without a bid is a class C felony.
Perkins said he also wanted the council to move on a proposal to use touch pads in the August city election. He also wants to clear up a problem with a city council vote that he said has caused the city to stop work on two HUD grants.
