:quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tronc/JPTPNEOMD5CJ3BB2F6H3DXIOLU.jpg)
Aurora City Council members are continuing to look at new regulations on their ward funds.
The City Council agreed to hold the latest version of an ordinance regulating how aldermanic initiative funds are spent at the Committee of the Whole for two weeks. At that point, aldermen are hoping to go over a final version to vote on by the end of the month.
The decision to hold came after a recent discussion on details of the new ordinance. City Council members have been discussing the ordinance for months as a way of codifying what has been the unofficial normal practice since 2015.
Aldermen are budgeted $75,000 in ward funds each year, money that comes from the Hollywood Casino-Aurora gaming tax. When created in the late 1990s, the ward funds were considered a way of getting some money back into the wards.
In 2006, the council added funds for the two at-large aldermen, who are elected citywide and do not have a specific ward. In 2009, the council agreed to split the $75,000 budgeted each year for each ward alderman, with $50,000 going toward specific capital projects such as parks, roads, sidewalks and such, and $25,000 for non-capital projects, such as educational programs or aid to private renovation projects.
Over time, aldermen began also spending them on softer costs for quality of life programming, things like ward clean-ups, shredding events and such.
That was drafted into an unofficial policy in 2015 by the Office Committee, made up of the four most senior City Council members.
At the recent Committee of the Whole meeting, aldermen cleared up some items that either would or would not be in the ordinance.
For instance, aldermen agreed on a section that would allow spending the funds on programming activities, such as community meetings, shredding, recycling or neighborhood clean-up days, cultural or educational programs.
It also would allow spending the money on honoraria, speaking fees, lodging, travel or entertainment expenses for bringing programming into town, as long as it does not exceed $3,000. If it does, it would have to first be approved by the council’s Rules, Administration and Procedures Committee.
Aldermen also reaffirmed that if money is committed to a capital project that takes more than one budget year, money can be carried over by an alderman to the next year. If an alderman wants to fund a $100,000 park in a ward, for instance, that aldermen could save $50,000 in capital funds and add it to the next year’s allocation to make the $100,000.
City Council members could not carry over any of the $25,000 in non-capital funds, unless they fill out a form to put the money in for a capital expense. Then the money could carry over, according to the proposal.
Aldermen also discussed and turned down the idea of being able to hire consultants or engineers with ward funds. An alderman could put money toward an engineering contract, but that contract would have to go through the normal city process of hiring a consultant through the Public Works Department with full City Council approval.
Some aldermen said otherwise they feared it could create a situation where an alderman could hire a consultant to counter another city-sponsored consultant.
“It could create too much dissension,” said Ald. Carl Franco, 5th Ward.