Athens City Council met Monday evening and suspended its rules twice in order to pass two appropriation-related ordinances.
Councilman Sam Crowl, D-3rd Ward, introduced an ordinance that transferred $200,000 — among other appropriations to various funds — to the general fund auditor for income tax return payments. Crowl immediately made a motion to suspend the rules so Council could pass the ordinance without three readings, which is normally required.
Kathy Hecht, the city auditor, said the auditor’s office was down to around $71,000 in the refund account when the department had nearly $80,000 of refund requests still to process.
“We need to get the money in that account so we can continue to process (the refunds) … they continue to come in daily at this point in the year,” Hecht said.
The ordinance passed unanimously and was followed by a second ordinance introduced by Crowl that also required Council to suspend the rules.
The ordinance was introduced to correct an error Council made in not paying a bill from 2019 that rolled over to 2020 and 2021 for specific services.
The business that provided the services is Sedgwick, which, according to its website, resulted from a 2021 merger between CareWorks Comp and CompManagement. Hecht said the company provides Athens with assistance in providing employees injury leave. The new owners of the company are urging the city to pay the expense as they continue to provide that service.
“It's probably just like almost any bill. If you miss a bill and you pay the next one, they apply it to the oldest bill and you continue paying but you're still behind,” Hecht said. “They don't skip that one and apply it to newer bills.”
The amount needed to pay the bill is $5,777 which will be transferred from the other administrative general fund.
Prior to the ordinance passing, Councilman Alan Swank, D-4th Ward, questioned how important it was for Council to suspend the rules for the ordinance. Swank said many community members criticized Council during the last election for frequently suspending its rules to pass ordinances at a quicker pace.
Crowl said he understood Swank’s hesitation to suspend the rules but said that the ordinance at hand is a “classic example” of when suspending the rules is necessary.
“This is not a case, in my mind, to make an example of this situation for the suspension of the rules. I agree that the Council should be very careful about suspension of the rules, especially when the public needs a chance to come forward over a period of three readings to talk about an issue that's very important to the city of Athens,” Crowl said. “The important thing with this is to pay the bills that we owe. So this is, in my mind, the wrong example to use.”
Councilwoman Sarah Grace, D-At Large, said the city has known about the outstanding bill for several weeks and said it would be “irresponsible” to wait even longer to pay it.
Athens Mayor Steve Patterson said he was confused as to why the discussion of suspending the rules was presented for that ordinance but not the previous ordinance appropriating funds to pay income tax returns.
“I'm a little taken aback by this whole conversation, given that you just got done suspending the rules to pass the previous ordinance,” Patterson said. “I just don't understand. I find it almost hypocritical to sit there and speak to not suspending this one when this is the most important one to go ahead and suspend.”
Swank responded to Patterson and said his statements were not hypocritical but rather that allowing the auditor and her staff to “do their job” was an emergency. Swank also said Crowl's statement changed his mind. Council subsequently voted to suspend the rules and passed the ordinance.
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