Whether they want to or not, Mayor Eddie Sundquist and the City Council need to come to an agreement on a possible bond act before the end of the year.

As Councilwoman Kim Ecklund, R-At Large and Republican challenger to Sundquist, noted during Monday’s meeting, payments for the bond act — currently proposed to be $6.9 million — aren’t included in Sundquist’s 2024 budget. That makes no sense given that the bond act has been floated for months before its formal unveiling last month. Now, because it took so long to put the bond act together, the bond act and budget will likely be comingled.

Ecklund is right that the budget is incomplete if the bond act is expected to be acted upon by the end of the year. While the city could make the first year of payments from the contingency fund or from its surplus, it’s a better financial practice to include the bond payments in the budget. That doesn’t mean the council has to act on the entire $6.9 million package. The bond the city is looking to acquire will be allocated for internal city infrastructure improvements such as $1.8 million to replace the municipal building roof and do facade work; $400,000 for security enhancements; $350,000 for window replacements; $500,000 for a Bergman Park waterline replacement; $2 million toward Fenton Mansion Roof repairs; and $1 million to complete the new central fleet garage on Washington Street.

Council members could take the most important and timely pieces of the bond act and pay for them with the city’s remaining ARPA funding while punting a decision on the rest of the bond act into 2024 with payments to start in 2025. Council members have signaled a desire to cut the bond act down.

We’re sure council members would prefer to wait until after November’s election to act on the bond act. We’d prefer they didn’t — voters for whom the bond act is an issue should know how their council member voted on the bond before the election. At the very least, something with the bond act has to be decided before the budget is finalized.