There was a GASB financial expert present at the December 6 City Council meeting, and each Councilor has received the Teres letter, as posted on Northampton Redoubt, regarding the mayor’s new health insurance policy and its retroactive nature. However, none of the council members asked on camera whether a long time city administered unwritten practice, that was followed for decades by the city, constitutes a policy that by adopting GASB accounting standards would be nullified, as previously asserted by Higgins.
Several did robustly debate the language as contained within the Best Practices resolution that calls for current city board members to be excluded from the Best Practices committee. In fact one of its sponsors, Ward 4 Councilor David Narkewicz, actually said to "put him down with the majority" regarding an amendment put forward by Councilor M. LaBarge to strike that language and then voted for the LaBarge amendment, which passed. The LaBarge amendment was not subjected to public comment as it occurred on the second reading of the compromise resolution. Dave, I love ya, but you campaigned in 2005 on a platform of having an ability to make tough choices, even when unpopular. Here you’ve drafted a compromise resolution and then taken the stance of not defending it with your co-sponsors. The moral decision would have been to table the resolution in order to allow the public as well as your citizen co-sponsors time to weigh in on the LaBarge amendment. So much for best practices.
