Former Mayor Comments on Budget, Employees

Former Mayor Sharon Robinson-Briggs urged support for the Legal Shield program, payment of gang workshop expenses, job restoration for certain employees and cuts in the current mayor's budget when she spoke in public comment at Tuesday's City Council meeting.

Robinson-Briggs lost her bid for a third term in 2013 to Mayor Adrian O. Mapp, who lost to her in the 2009 mayoral race, as she frequently reminded him for the ensuing four years. When Mapp was council president, he often wielded his power to keep her proposed resolutions off the agenda.

On Tuesday, Robinson-Briggs began by saying she came out "on a rainy night and a night that I had surgery" to speak. Among her concerns:

- She had allowed employees in 2013 to sign up for a payroll deduction plan for legal costs, which Mapp halted.
"It was reviewed and approved by me and it should have gone forward," she said.
The issue came up at every meeting for about three months, including one in March where Gloria Taylor, appointed to fill the Third Ward vacancy caused by Mapp's taking office, accused him of "dirty politics" by offering a quid-pro-quo to restore the program.

- Robinson-Briggs urged payment of disputed costs associated with a gang workshop she held in August 2013.
"Please pay them," she said. "Vendors are calling."

-She urged the council to add Kim Montford, a former Shade Tree Commission member (and her 2013 co-host for Rev. Al Sharpton) to the Citizens Budget Advisory Committee. The seven-member CBAC is appointed by the council.

- Claiming the Mapp-led council in 2013 "cut my budget down to the bones," she rattled off a long list of items she felt should be cut from Mapp's 2014 budget, including new staff salaries.
"Are these positions that we need to run the city or are they political salaries?" she asked, alleging many new hires were on Mapp's transition team.
"To add another million dollars to the budget is absolutely criminal," she said.

- Robinson-Briggs also urged restoration of "mentor" Roland Crawford, whose job at Hannah Atkins Playground was "written out of the budget." Crawford, also known as Roland Muhammad, frequently castigated Mapp and certain other council members on Robinson-Briggs' behalf, noting, "I say things the mayor can't say."

--Bernice

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