City Council members were pretty clear prior to last week’s voting session that they had reservations with a plan to spend $150,000 on a project to upgrade the area underneath the railroad viaduct on North Main Street.

Council members agreed with Mayor Eddie Sundquist, Crystal Surdyk, development director, and Tim Jackson, police chief and public safety director, that brightening the area with better lighting could help better police the area and make the viaduct safer for pedestrians, council members expressed reservations spending an additional $100,000 to put in a parklet under the viaduct. There are many reasons not to spend money on the parklet.

But when the voting session agenda was released prior to the meeting, the full project was on the agenda for approval by the council rather than the amended, scaled back, lighting-only project. It’s as if the discussion at the committee meeting never even happened — and frankly a slap in the face to Finance Committee members.

When asked via email by Councilwoman Kim Ecklund, R-At Large and Finance Committee chairwoman, Surdyk replied the administration was still requesting the full $150,000 amount because cleaning up and activating the space is critical, in their view, to connecting downtown with Brooklyn Square and the Riverwalk.

“We understand that ARPA funds are close to being fully allocated and we don’t want to miss the opportunity to make a significant impact to public safety while improving the aesthetic of this important space for a relatively low cost in comparison. Should the Council feel the total cost of the project is too high, rather than see the resolution fail, we request that the lighting portion of the project at least be considered,” Surdyk wrote in response to Ecklund’s question.

The problem is the decision had already been made. It’s fine to advocate for a project, but the council — which controls the power of the purse — was clear that only the lighting had been approved. The project on the council agenda should have reflected the council’s desire for the scaled-down project, not the project the executive branch really, really wanted. If the executive branch wanted to advocate for the full project, it should have done so during the voting session by having a sympathetic council member attempt to amend the Finance Committee’s approved project on the floor of the council meeting. That way the vote on the full project is taken publicly.

One reason to have City Council standing committees is to advance items from the committee to the full council for a vote. This structure is common in our form of government, and we can’t figure out why that’s so hard for some to understand unless they didn’t take a civics class in high school. In our view, the council should be more clear by having the City Clerk’s office draft resolutions as the council wants it to appear on the voting session agenda. Given the propensity of this executive branch to continue lobbying for projects up to the point of disregarding the council’s clear direction, the council needs to take the additional step of crafting the resolution in open session so that the record clearly reflects the what the council is actually approving during committee meetings. Then, there is no excuse for the council’s wishes to be as easily disregarded as they were in June.