Voting to pay the bills: What's the big deal?

At last weeks meeting, there was a major issue facing the village when two trustees would not vote to pay the bills. When the board doesn't successfully vote to pay the bills, the bills cannot be paid, legally. That's a problem for the village and a problem for our vendors. As a village, we need to ensure that we pay our vendors to ensure they continue to provide services and to prevent incurring late fees.

So why are trustees willing to let the village face such fees and loss of service? Trustee Ponio has never voted to pay the bills...not because he doesn't want the bills to be paid, but because he wants to to be able to review the bills before voting to approve them. Trustee Ponio's issue with voting the night of the bill consent agenda is that the bill sheet is provided just moments before we (trustees) are asked to vote to pay them giving us NO time for proper review and for any questions to be answered about the bills if any questions arise. Ponio has been asking for more time to be provided to review the bills so he knows what he is approving, and if there are any bills he has questions about, there is time to pull it or ask the Finance Director.

The simple solution is provide the bill sheet in advance; Trustee Ponio wants at least 48 hours prior to the vote; I think the request may not be feasible, but one day--one full day--in advance shouldn't be too much to ask for and if trustees know they will be asked to vote to pay bills on Thursday night, picking up the bill sheet on Tuesday night or Wednesday morning should be a compromise that I think is feasible; if there are bills that are not able to make it to the monthly bill sheet in advance, then perhaps we need to vote bi-monthly versus monthly. The bottom line is, we do not want to incur late fees, lose confidence in our vendors, and not pay our village bills, but I cannot blame a Trustee who does not want to pay bills without having the ability to review what he is voting to pay for; the same as one wouldn't pay their credit card bill without reviewing the bill; we want to ensure everything on it is a charge we incurred and the interest rates are as agreed upon and ensure there is no errors. Some may think Ponio is being stubborn, but I know this man; he is an honest and stand up man whose word is golden and his vote is the same--meaning, if he wont vote to pay bills and even at the risk of incurring late fees, it's because he stands for what he says: open and honest government. He has every right to review the bills with ample time before being asked to vote. Many others, myself included, have assumed that the bills are legitimate, based on trust of the Finance Director, and I also assume any discrepancies are caught by the director, but maybe that is an assumption I should not make because ultimately, I am voting to pay something that I haven't really reviewed.

Perhaps instead of some rolling their eyes and thinking Ponio and others are being difficult, realize that they are not going to say "OK, I vote to pay" without knowing what they are paying and find a way to fix the problem; give the board information in advance. Trustee Saville, not wanting the village to incur late fees did eventually reconsider his vote and then agreed to vote for the bills. However, I think this matter should be a lesson to the Mayor and to the rest of the board; ensure the information is there in advance. This is not new--it's been an ongoing issue for years for some trustees but no policies or resolutions have been created to suit the needs of the trustee...so much could be accomplished if we were all working together to ensure everyone is getting what they need to do their job as a representative of this village. Til then, I sadly think we will continue to have a divided board and divided village.