Every city has a self proclaimed watchdog.  Greenville has had several over the years.  These folks get under the skin of the elected officials and create extra work for city staff but they serve a useful and important purpose.  They keep the folks who have control of our tax money on their toes.  Let’s face it.  Most of us are too busy with our lives to dig down into city budgets and attend or watch council meetings on TV.  In recent years Greenville Citizen Terry Boardman, a certified public accountant,  has served in this role for taxpayers in the city.

Boardman ran unsuccessfully for city council a few years ago but has remained involved in the process by constantly questioning the decisions made by the council and the city manager.  His style can be very brash and ‘in your face’ but there is no doubt that Boardman has changed the dialogue at times and alerted the citizenry of potential shortcomings at City Hall.  Recently, Boardman has been calling for the formation of a city financial committee, made up of money managing professionals to oversee decisions made with taxpayer money.

The flap over whether the city needed to increase taxes this past summer became even more murky when Boardman recently sent an email  to City Manager Barbara Lipscomb and copied it to the entire council and selected members of the media.  In the email Boardman alleges poor management of city funds saying that the city borrowed $5,000,000 to fund the downtown parking deck and left it in a non-interest bearing account while the deck is completed, meaning the funds are sitting idle for up to six months.    Boardman says that decision cost the city between $87,500 and $1000,000 in potential interest.

In a subsequent email Boardman says he has reviewed the city’s financial statements and learned Greenville has $59,600,000 in cash and investments as of June 30, 2014.  According to the email Boardman says that is $7,000,000 more than the city had a year ago on the same date which, he says, is proof the council did not need to vote for the controversial tax increase.    He points out that at least two city council people, Calvin Mercer and Rick Smiley, have bought the idea that Greenville is financially strapped and  left with no other option other than a tax increase.  Neither Mercer nor Smiley are financial professionals and taxpayers can only hope they have spent as much time going through the financial statements of the city as Boardman has.

The city is forced to respond to Boardman and there is, no doubt, that his requests have become a source of frustration for the city staff.  For her part, the city manager has done a nice job of maintaining her composure and professionalism in the face of many of Boardman’s accusations.  She points out that the city’s finances are audited and that the excess funds are for construction of the parking deck and street maintenance which are ongoing projects and the excess will be exhausted by the end of the fiscal year.  That is a reasonable answer however it does not eliminate all the concerns presented by the hours of work by Boardman.

The idea of a city financial committee seems to have great merit and could go a long way toward restoring faith and confidence in a city council that has lost much credibility in the way they went about raising taxes.  Our community is full of top level financial experts that would be willing to serve in such a capacity.  The formation of such an advisory group would take the politics out of some of the decisions that affect the taxpayers and go a long way toward restoring confidence in city government.