Budget Increases Under Each Councilmember

What follows is a list of those running for city council who currently or previously served on council.   After each person’s name is the number of budget cycles he or she participated in and how much the budget increased during their time in office.  The last column is column #2 divided by column #1.

And just to be clear, no council member can increase the budget by themself.  It takes 5 votes to pass a budget.  I don’t think there is a person on this list who voted against every budget, but I seem to recall Ryan Buckhannon and Jimmy Carroll voting against at least 1 budget (and maybe more.)  Unfortunately I just don’t have the time to go back and review years of council minutes to see who voted no.  If someone would like to do this, I will gladly post the results.

Jimmy Carroll          6 yrs        32.4%      5.4%

Dick Cronin              9 yrs        34.4%      3.8%

Barbara Bergwerf   8 yrs        34.4%      4.3%

Ryan Buckhannon   9 yrs        30.4%      3.4%

Patrick Harrington  4 yrs        17.8%      4.4%

Mike Loftus                8 yrs        28.1%      3.5%

Ralph Piening            4 yrs          5.5%      1.3%

Final comments:  Buckhannon was on council longer than 9 years, but the city website only has the city budget online since fiscal year 2008.  I have only included Cronin’s time as mayor.  I believe he was on council for 3 years before being elected Mayor, but I could be mistaken.