The Answer (?)

City Councilor James Shanley got in touch with the mayor and secured an answer to our question posted here: To paraphrase, just how is the city going to stash $400,000 away to offset any differences between market rates for electricity and what the city would be paying through any solar deal?

Apparently, the mayor will put the money--which will be left over from a $1.6 bmillion rebate coming from the state--into an Alternative Energy Stabilization Account, which is the proper vehicle to carry money from year-to-year. Any expenditures from the account would have to be approved by the City Council, so the any dipping into the fund would get a full public airing.

If untouched, the money also would be available to purchase the solar panels in the future if we sought to do so.

As Shanley notes, this gives the council a degree of oversight in the deal, some thing which seemed to be missing in the first go around (as an anonymous poster offered in the linked post.) Shanley, in a comment on that same post, correctly points out that the council really has no jurisdiction over the mayor's negotiation of the solar deal so it was in no position to oversee anything.

He's right, of course. But as a voter I'd enjoy seeing the council butt into the mayor's office a little more often. Councilors generally have kept quiet about a few of the larger controversies this year including the Clamshack and the Solar Deal. Of course, when a councilor does step in--like Larry McCavitt--they're piled upon on by anonymous commenters telling them to mind their own business.

No one said councilors had an easy job.

But as Shanley hints at in his comment, the answer might lie in a change in the city's charter.

I've always been a proponent of having an elected mayor run the city. But the invisible wall between the City Council and Mayor's office has me wondering if the city would fare better under a city manager system. At least that way the council--who I think answer more directly to voters because they're more likely to get voted out of office--would have a much larger stake in the performance of the person managing the city's affairs. Seems to me that would focus more eyeballs on the operations of the city.

I'm still undecided, but I'm clearly off on a tangent. More on the Charter Review later.

Thanks to Councillor Shanley and the Mayor Moak for providing an answer.