City Attorney Falls Down In His Attack On Whittaker

For Refusing to Aid in Bonding the City Without a Vote of the People

Mr. Sawyer's Own Arguments Logically Carried Out Would Show That It Is Not Necessary for the City to Bond

City Attorney Sawyer has rushed into print with an open letter to Representative Whittaker, who declines to introduce the amended bill drawn by Mr. Sawyer to bond Ann Arbor for $25,000 unless certain changes are made, and in the middle of Mr. Sawyer's long flow of words we discover that the only change that Mr. Whittaker asks is that the people should be permitted to vote upon the issuing of bonds before bonds are issued.

This is little to ask, but it was enough to rouse Mr. Sawyer's ire and Mr. Sawyer says: "You ask me to make certain changes in the bill as though I was the man that made the bill, and I was the common council that passed it, and I was the city that needed the relief, and I was the only man concerned in it."

If Mr. Whittaker thought this he was really not so far out of the way as Mr. Sawyer might now have the public believe. Mr. Sawyer did draft the bill. He made impassioned speeches to the council to secure their endorsement of it, he bullied those aldermen who didn't know as it was the thing to do. He claimed that it was the only thing they could do. He told them that the city owed so much money, that they could not collect taxes unless the first paid it. If this bill was not Mr. Sawyer's whose was it? If Mr. Sawyer is not the common council why does he usually occupy about half the time at council meeting arguing for this or that measure?

If it is the city that needs relief why not permit the city to say so? Why not let the city vote on it! If there are others besides Mr. Sawyer concerned in this bill, as there certainly are, why not let them have some voice in it? Why not let the pope on whose homes the bonds will constitute a mortgage say whether they want the bonds or not?

Mr. Sawyer endeavors to shield himself behind the common council. If he was technically following the orders of the council, those orders were obtained by his connivance and, as every alderman knows, by his earnest pleadings in the council chamber.

Mr. Sawyer misstates the charter provisions when he says:

"The Andrews case drew the attention of our banks, and the city officials to the fact that. there was no authority vested in the common council to issue orders unless the city was in funds or unless the common council had allowed just claims allowed by the city and included in the annual June budget."

To sustain this contention, Mr. Sawyer refers to section 186 of the charter. We have quoted this before. Nothing is said in it about orders being permitted without funds in the treasury after the June budget is passed but not permitted before that date. What is said, and all that is said, on the subject is:

"But the common council may allow just claims against the city, and may issue orders therefore on the treasurer, or payable on presentation from any moneys then in the treasury on the first day of February thereafter; but such second named class of orders shall not, in any fiscal year, exceed the aggregate taxes levied in such year for the payment of the same."

Nothing is here said that orders shall not be drawn until after the first Monday in June. Nothing was farther from the intent of the framers the charter. The charter plainly says the aggregate amount of taxes levied in that fiscal year. That is the restriction upon the city's floating indebtedness. It must have none at the end of its fiscal year. It had none at the end of the last fiscal year and with ordinary economy it will have none at. the end of its next fiscal year and that without bonding for a penny.

Later on in support of his connection as to the amount of money that the city needs to bound forMr. Sawyer states that an expert was employed who went over the books and reported that the overdraft would byJuly 15 approximate the same of $25,000, adding, "I have-not the exact figures before me." That is one of the troubles of this administration, it never seems to have exact figures before it. It gave the legislature which passed the $40,000 bonding act to understand that Ann Arbor had an overdraft of approximately that amount, when the exact figures showed that at the time and at the end of the fiscal year, a few days later, the city had not a Penney's overdraft, and that deducting from the money it had in the bank all the city owed to the school and other funds, the city still had a balance on hand.

So far from having exact figures on hand, the city funds were in its reports actually short over$30,000 which had been paid out of the city funds for a district improvement, when there was ample money in the district fund to make good this shortage in the city funds. The council's expert confirmed the Argus discoveries as to the condition of the funds which made it possible to claim an overdraft when there was none and the council very properly put this $30,000 back into the city funds where it belonged, thus leaving the city funds with cash on hand.

Mr. Whittaker is positive that the information he had received from Mr. Sawyer and the mayor was that there was an overdraft of $40,000, that it was necessary that the bonding bill be passed quickly so that the overdraft could be made-up before February 1, as an overdraft on that date was illegal. This has been shown so positively was not the case that the administration does not now claim an overdraft February 1.

Then another tact was taken. There was no overdraft but there was going to be one.It would amount not to $40,000 but to $25,000 by the time the taxes were collected, by July 15. It was absolutely necessary to bond for this amount as all overdrafts were illegal.

Under the persistent pounding of the Argus and the quoting of section 186, showing that all the restriction on the allowance of bills was that they should not exceed the taxes levied in the fiscal year in which they were allowed, and that the taxes would suffice to care for the overdraft, Mr. Sawyer has now taken another reef in his sails. Overdrafts are allowable as soon as the budget is made up in June. The estimated overdraft on that date, according to Mr. Seyler, is $16,106.88. Yet Mr. Sawyer is still asking for $25,000, when according to his latest admission $16,000 would suffice. Why issue ten-year interest bearing bonds for $25,000 when $16,000 would suffice accordion to their own theories?

Having faced him down from $40,000 to $25,000 and having an admission that at the date he fixes as the limit at which overdrafts are allowable only $16,000 will be due, the Argus does not despair of convincing him that even the necessity for paying interest on this $16,000 for a series of years does not exist.

The city taxes last year were over $73,000. This is many thousands of dollars higher than the average city expenditures for the past ten years, or the past five years, and to this will be added about $9,000 liquor taxes. With economy and the levy of the same taxes this year as last, this year's taxes should suffice to wipe out the overdraft that is such a bugaboo to Mr. Sawyer, an overdraft which has for many years existed just before taxes are collected and which has been one of the best safeguards against the extravagance that a plethoric treasury begets. If this is so then there can be no necessity for issuing bonds which will require the payment of interest not for two or three months as is the case with overdrafts but for from one to ten years.

But to the task of proving to Mr. Sawyer that as he has already practically admitted that $24,000 of the $40,000 bonds he wanted are not necessary, he might as well admit that the other $16,000 are not either.

Section 186 says plainly that the council may allow orders payable on the first day of February. This is the only class of warrants that the mayor and clerk have ever signed. the only restriction on the amount of such orders is, in the words of the charter that the aggregate "shall not, in any fiscal year, exceed the aggregate taxes levied in such year for the payment of the same." What is the city's fiscal year? Does it begin with June as Mr. Sawyer intimates in his talk of a June budget? Not at all. The charter expressly states in section 170; "The fiscal year shall commence on the first day of February in each year." Nothing said about June. Mr. Sawyer admits that after the tax levy is made the council may audit bills even if it hanse funds on hand, provided the aggregate does not exceed the aggregate of taxes levied. It speaks of the fiscal year both as to the aggregate of orders and as to the aggregate of taxes.

But supposing for the sake of argument, which of course we do not admit as a matter of fact, that Mr. Sawyer is right in his contention that the council cannot allow bills until after it makes the tax levy, still there is no necessity for bonding. For the council can make that tax levy at its next meeting. There is no direct provision in the charter as to when the tax levy for any final year shall be made, excepting Section 181 states that the city clears shall certify it to the assessor "on or before the first Monday in June in each year." The council may make up its tax levy, its June budget as Mr. Sawyer calls it, any time between February 1 and the first Monday in June in each year. The earlier it makes it up the more time the city assessor will have to perfect his tax rolls. So that granting Mr. Sawyer's contentions as to orders drawn prior to the tax levy, the council has in its power to get around that by making the tax levy for collection July at once. But, as we have stated this distinction of before and after the budget is not recognized in the charter, and is only gotten up by Mr. Sawyer as a specious method of getting around a plain charter provision.