Alderman Kyle Moore, R-3, is touting Quincy’s recent efforts to make the city’s finances more “transparent” to the average citizen. In the process he’s also giving himself a little pat on the back because Moore is the one who led the charge to get more of the city’s budgetary data posted on the city’s Web site — www.quincyil.gov.

Here’s what Moore had to say in a press release this week:

This past year we have made great strides in the city with transparency and our budget process. Before I was on the council, citizens had no easy access to our current budget and no ability to track spending. If someone wanted to get involved in our budget process, it took many trips to city hall for someone to get the information they needed.

In June, with the help of the Mayor, the City Council, Comptroller Ann Scott and IT Director Jim Murphy, we started to change and modernize our budget process, making it easier for citizens to get involved. The first step we took was placing our current budget online, which also gives the ability to track spending as we do on the City Council. The next step was the creating of a “21 Day Online Public Inspection” Ordinance, which puts into our law that the city must post proposed budgets online 21 days before the City Council votes on the budget.

A few weeks ago, a citizen of Quincy suggested to me that we place our Comprehensive Annual Report from the previous fiscal year online, giving citizens the ability to see how we actually spent their money in the past. I suggested this to Ann Scott last week, and I am happy to report that the 2009 Comprehensive Annual Report is now online. With this step, we have now moved our budget process into the 21st Century. Citizens can now go online and see how we’ve spent their money in the past, how we are spending their money now, and during the budget discussion, see how we are proposing to spend their money. This could not have happened without the hard work and dedication from the people I mentioned above, and I truly thank them for their efforts.

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Click here to see the City of Quincy 2009 Comprehensive Annual Report and the city’s most recent monthly budget summaries.

Mayor John Spring reported Monday that 49 percent of Adams County residents have already returned their U.S. census forms.

He said that’s ahead of the pace for the same time period 10 years ago when the census was last conducted.

“We feel real good about this,” he said.

Spring is leading a Complete Count Committee that’s helping to promote and oversee the 2010 census in Quincy and Adams County. Thursday, April 1, is Census Day in America — the date on which all census counts are to be based.

Spring said so far no special enumerators have been sent out to seek compliance from residents who have not yet submitted their census forms. But he said enumerators will be hitting the streets eventually.

Spring said getting an accurate count is important for Quincy because census data will be used to distribute congressional seats to the states and distribute billions of dollars annually in federal funds to local and state governments.

Spring said he’s hoping the city will beat the results achieved in 2010 when only about 74 percent of the local population returned their census forms.
Spring said he’d like to see “100 percent compliance.”

This prompted one unnamed city official to ask philosophically that if the goal is to reach 100 percent of an unknown amount, how will anyone know when the goal has been reached?

Good point.

In an unexpected and unannounced move, Mayor John Spring asked aldermen and others in the council chambers to stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance at the outset of Monday’s City Council meeting.

The action was in response to a request by Quincy resident Carol Mullins, who appeared before the council two weeks ago to ask that the Pledge of Allegiance be recited at the start of each council meeting. She presented petitions signed by 50 people in support of her request.

The council took no action immediately on Mullins’ request. But Spring has been considering the suggestion ever since and decided to take the request to heart.

So he asked Alderman Ben Bumbry, D-1, to lead the pledge Monday night, and the entire room joined in the ceremonial recitation — a first in modern council history.

Spring told the audience he did some research and found that the pledge has simply never been part of the council’s weekly ritual.

“There was no disrespect that we hadn’t done that in the past. It just had never been done,” he said.

“I think part of it is because the council meets 52 weeks a year, unlike many (public bodies) that only meet once a month. Nonetheless I thought it (Mullins’ suggestion) was a great idea.”

After the meeting, Spring said he plans to have the pledge recited each week at council meetings. “I’ll just go around the table and ask each alderman to lead us in the pledge,” he said.

Mayor John Spring was the target of comments by one of the speakers at Monday’s City Council meeting.

Parker Gerdes told aldermen he came to the meeting “to ask if we can remove ourselves from the Mayors Against Illegal Guns group.”

He was referring to Spring’s participation in a bipartisan coalition of about 350 mayors from 40 states. The group has been leading a campaign to prevent criminals from illegally obtaining guns with a goal of making the streets safer for people.

Spring’s participation in the group became a political issue in the April 2008 mayoral campaign. Spring’s Republican opponent at that time, Dave Bellis, characterized the coalition as “an extreme anti-gun organization.”

Spring defended his participation in the group as an effort “to keep illegal guns off the streets and out of the hands of criminals.” Spring said he is not against hunting or private gun ownership.

During Monday’s council meeting, Gerdes noted some recent court rulings called into question the legality of handgun bans in several large cities, including Chicago.

Gerdes said Spring’s participation in the MAIG organization “doesn’t really match at all the citizens of Quincy or Adams County.” He said recent statistics show Adams County has 1,155 active memberships in the National Rifle Association. Of those, 217 are lifetime members, he said.

Gerdes also suggested that Spring’s participation in the coalition could open the city to potential lawsuits if the coalition gets sued.

“Don’t you think with everything going on at the moment that leaving Mayors Against Illegal Guns could alleviate Quincy should any lawsuits ever come up that are class action against that group?” Gerdes asked Monday. “It is just up to you and the council to decide that.”

The council had no response to Gerdes’ comments, except Spring asked him: “Do you know I belong to the NRA?”

Gerdes acknowledged he checked into that and confirmed Spring was indeed a member.