Questions About the 2024 Budget Ordinance
In December, the Sugar Hill City Council took the unique action of passing the 2024 Budget as an ordinance.
The budgets have never been passed as an ordinance since I started observing the City of Sugar Hill government in 2019, so it immediately seemed odd. But as an ordinance, any changes to it would require another ordinance, which would be subject to mayoral veto, as explicitly stated in the City Charter. I said at the time that it seemed obvious that the existing City Council, who was losing its majority at the end of the year, was looking to lock in its spending on the way out the door.
As you can expect, the pre-2024 Old Guard City Council Members took exception to that, claiming that they were required by the Charter to pass the budget as an ordinance. Furthermore, two of the City’s Attorneys said that it was their opinion that the budget should always be passed as an ordinance.
So, I got a little curious. Was my memory about the previous budgets a mistaken recollection, or were there shenanigans afoot?
On February 12 2024, I submitted an Open Records Request (ORR) for “electronic copies of the signed budget ordinances for budgets years 1999-2024.“
On February 15, 2024, I received a response from the City. The only budget ordinance in existence for those years was for the 2024 budget.
So, not only had the City not passed a budget as an ordinance since I’VE been here, they actually hadn’t passed their budgets as ordinance for twenty-five (25) years!
That begs the question: WHY NOT?
IF there was anything in the Charter or Ordinances (because I am not convinced there is) that really said they HAD to do it that way, why weren’t they doing it? How did all of these elected officials miss that for so long only to magically open their eyes in December 2023 after they got their clocks cleaned in an election?
Furthermore, did the attorneys not advise them previously to pass these budgets as ordinances, or were all the Mayors and City Council Members ignoring their lawyers’ advice?
The passage (or attempt thereof) of the budget introduces even more questions.
On December 11, 2023, at the regular monthly City Council meeting, all members of the City Council at that time (Cohen, Thatcher, Hicks, and Anderson - Roszel resigned his seat prior to the meeting) voted in favor of a motion from Cohen and seconded by Thatcher to pass the 2024 budget “as presented.”
After the City votes on ordinances, there is a document that the Mayor, Council Members, and City Clerk sign. It is my understanding that this is typically done at the time of the meeting. Judging by the date on the document (December 11, 2023), that appears to be the case for this 2024 budget ordinance, too.
However, the ORR revealed that the 2024 budget ordinance was only signed by Members Taylor Anderson and Alvin Hicks, and Mayor Brandon Hembree. There were no signatures from Marc Cohen or Jenn Thatcher who were present at the meeting and voted for the ordinance. To this day, they apparently have not signed. And as of December 31, 2023, both Cohen and Thatcher ceased to be members of the Sugar Hill City Council.
In the ORR response, the City Clerk informed me that she would pass along a fully signed copy when she had one. Why wouldn’t Cohen and Thatcher have signed it then? And the BIGGER questions, are they legally allowed to come back more than two months after the vote - and after they’re no longer in office - and sign the document?
If they can’t, then is an ordinance lacking signatures binding?
Usually, I like to fully investigate things before I put them out there. But, this is very strange, and I think it is in the public’s best interest to see what I have right now before the City has time to crank up its magical CYA machine.
We may never know why they didn’t sign the document, but I think we can definitely get some clarity on the rest of it, although it may take some time. I am currently reaching out to people to get some answers. Stay tuned.
