City council passes 2025 budget; the system worked

Cleveland Heights City Council voted unanimously to pass a full-year budget on March 17. It wasn’t easy, but at the end of the day, city council did its job; first, by not rubber stamping the mayor’s substandard, incomplete budget on Dec. 16, and then by passing a temporary budget on Dec. 19 that gave the administration more time. Eventually the administration provided most of the necessary information council requested, and the result was a much-improved budget for 2025. (Please visit the city’s website for details.)

If you have not been following the budget saga, there were a lot of red flags along the way, such as:

• No finance director was hired in 2024 after the prior director resigned in January of that year.
• An overwhelmed interim finance director quit during the budget hearings last November after calling the budget “an embarrassment.”
• The former city administrator, Danny Williams, gave his notice in September 2024, leaving the mayor without budget assistance. (The new city administrator, Dan Horrigan, quit abruptly on March 17, 2025, less than three months after starting the job.)
• The city administration missed four deadlines/extensions given by the state auditor to review the city's unaudited financial statements from 2023; the 2023 state audit still has not been completed.
• Fourth-quarter financial reports for 2024 were not given to council until March 3, 2025.
  
  

Nevertheless, council was able to offer a variety of solutions to help lead us through this difficult process. Some of those solutions included:

• Council Member Jim Petras creating a temporary budget to give the administration more time to finish its work.
• Council Member Jim Posch suggesting we hire an outside CPA firm to help guide us through the process and make helpful recommendations.
• Council Member and Finance Committee Chair Gail Larson masterfully leading six productive Finance Committee meetings to methodically obtain answers to critically important questions.
  
  

Now that the city has a budget, all parties can concentrate on how we move forward. The recommendations from the CPA firm council hired could go a long way toward making things go more smoothly in the future; its recommendations include:

• Fully staffing the Finance Department and adding an Assistant Finance Director.
• Upgrading Finance Department software to help integrate departmental reports.
• Providing all outstanding information to the state auditor ASAP.
• Providing monthly financial reports to council members.
• Council and the mayor should work together to identify a process that includes timelines and a user-friendly format for presenting budget information in a timely and comprehensive manner. (Collaboration is key.)
  
  

So, at the end of the day, the system worked. The checks and balances applied by six members of this city council produced a better 2025 budget.

I certainly could have lived without the insults that council had to endure, and the phony assertion that the sky would fall if council adopted a temporary budget. But in the end, this government produced a far better budget than the completely inadequate one presented to us in November of last year . . . because CH City Council did its job.