Residents to offer advice on city finances

Watervliet committee hosts initial meeting

WATERVLIET, N.Y. » A handful of city residents came together Wednesday night at the Watervliet Senior Center to offer their thoughts on how the city can give taxpayers more bang for their buck.

While both members and organizers are unsure how much input they will actually have into the city’s annual budget or any other financial matters, but are hopeful that they will be able to help the process and offer some proposals to city officials.

Formation of the financial advisory committee was spearheaded by Councilman Charles Patricelli, who also helped form the fledgling Parks Committee, a similar group that also began meeting recently.

“What I was looking at basically was using this group as a tool,” explained Patricelli at the beginning of the meeting. “I thought about this last year; we talked about it even last year. We mentioned about having something to come together to put together and look at some of the numbers as a city. What we’re planning on doing is to look at some of the items to try to help out the budget process.”

The first meeting, which lasted about 90 minutes, was attended by a handful of volunteers, including Pat Doyle, Bill Fahr and Kathy Majer, along with Patricelli and new city Deputy Finance Director Amanda Austin. The volunteers said they have a real interest in trying to help the city in any way they can.

“I’m definitely interested to help out as much as I can and see where this committee goes,” said Doyle.

During the meeting, the group briefly looked over some of the numbers from a 2016 audit, and Austin explained the city is currently being audited again.

“The state has been in City Hall,” Austin explained. “They were, they have been, they will be for the new few months auditing our financials. Our independent auditors are also auditing us, so we are being audited all over the place.”

The group did establish some goals they would like to achieve, both personally and on the city’s behalf.

“I think it will be good to try to understand numbers with revenues and expense,” said Fahr, ”and it would be good to see where the city could possibly try to save some money too.”

The volunteer committee also discussed the possibility of turning the volunteer group into an organized committee through the city.

“We want to basically see how this group can help with the budget process,” said Patricelli. “We have a process for the budget, which has to be adopted by December, so we are going to have budget meetings. We want to see what we’re going to look at from now until those city budget hearings begin. Do we want to offer anything for it, and what can we even help with?”