The emergency was moved and seconded. Mr. Peterson explained the nature of the emergency. The
emergency was approved unanimously.
CM Gaffney, Jr., provided an overview of the bill. CM Salem asked how much was originally approved
for traffic calming in District 8 and how much had been used. Mr. Peterson said $300,000 had been
approved and that $0 had been spent for traffic calming. CM Salem then asked how much had been
spent before the $75,000 being appropriated by this bill; Mr. Peterson said $25,000 had been approved
by the Council for the OysterFest event. CM Salem asked for CM Gaffney, Jr., to clarify the intent of
the dollars approved for traffic calming.
CM Gaffney, Jr., said that he parked the dollars in the Traffic Calming account with no intention of
using them, though some were intended for speed humps. He said that some communities in his district
are not engaging in the process to have speed humps installed. He said he ultimately parked the funds in
the traffic-calming account at the time because he wasn’t sure how he would use them.
CM Salem asked if the $300,000 was part of the budget process, as he recalled. Mr. Peterson confirmed
that was the case, explaining that they were part of leftover dollars in the Council Contingency account
and were requested by CM Gaffney, Jr., for this purpose. CM Salem said he was uncomfortable with
this since the money was intended for traffic calming. CM Gaffney, Jr., reiterated that, at the time he
requested the funds, he was unsure how he would use them, but ultimately decided to allocate them to
traffic calming, since some of them were planned for that purpose. He said some of the communities do
not want traffic calming at this time.
CM Amaro said that it did not look good for dollars allocated for traffic calming to be spent on other
programs. He said he was not sure how he would vote.
CM Boylan said it would be best to return the dollars to the General Operating account and appropriate
the money from there. He took issue with using dollars for traffic calming, a safety issue, for a program
that was not a safety issue. He suggested a substitution to the bill that would put money back into the
Operating Reserve and then appropriate funds for the program from that account, as that would be more
transparent.
CM Gay asked CM Gaffney, Jr., to clarify what he meant by “parking” the dollars in the Traffic
Calming account. CM Gaffney, Jr., said that at the time he was unsure how he would spend the money,
but he knew that many of his constituents had reached out about traffic calming, so he parked the money
there, not knowing whether he would need the full amount for those purposes. He said that, after hosting
several community meetings, there is currently less consensus in the community on traffic-calming
measures. CM Gay asked whether there was an amount CM Gaffney, Jr., would like to keep for traffic
calming, so the remainder could be returned to the General Fund, as suggested by CM Boylan. CM
Gaffney, Jr., said that was fine with him but noted that he was trying to get the dollars appropriated
quickly to Goodwill for their youth jobs program.
Ms. Staffopoulos said it could be accomplished in one or two bills, though she did not see the point of
doing it in one bill, only to move the money into an account and then transfer it to another. She said they
could introduce a substitute bill to transfer the funds from the Traffic Calming account to the Operating
Reserves, at which point a subsequent bill could be filed to appropriate the funds to Goodwill from the
Operating Reserves. CM Amaro stated that would be his suggestion to ensure transparency, though he
understood the need to fund the program in a timely fashion.
