Discussion of the Ericksen opening is delayed over budget maneuvering.

It was a much talked-about meeting that has, instead, sparked much talk about why it didn’t happen.

Scheduled for Wednesday night, a City Council workshop that was to include discussion of a controversial downtown road link was cancelled at the last minute, when most of the council opted not to attend.

While some councilors said they were tied up with work or family, at least two skipped the meeting out of protest.

“There were items that should have been on the agenda that weren’t,” said Councilman Nezam Tooloee, speaking not of the much awaited presentation of a report on a possible connection between Ericksen Avenue and Hildebrand Lane, but of a scheduled discussion on the city budget.

“There were major (budget) policies that the administration doesn’t want to see debated, let alone adopted,” he said.

Tooloee and Councilman Jim Llewellyn said proposals to curb city staffing and spending were not added to the evening’s agenda, as they had requested. They also objected to the agenda being set and advertised to the public before the full council could provide input.

“It was a bit of a protest,” Llewellyn said. “The only version (of the agenda) we saw was the one that was (set to) happen. There were budget issues we wanted to discuss. My view parallels exactly that of Nezam Tooloee’s. We both share the view that operating expenses will exceed the income available.”

Mayor Darlene Kordonowy distanced herself from the process that set the meeting’s agenda.

“For Nezam to say I had anything to do with the agenda…he’s wrong about that,” she said.

Rather, Kordonowy said the process for setting the agenda followed the usual protocols with Administrator Mary Jo Briggs and Council Chair Chris Snow working together to put the agenda together.

Briggs and Snow could not be reached for comment, but Kordonowy said it is often challenging to include each councilor’s preferred items on every meeting agenda.

“It’s difficult to please someone who wants their way all the time,” she said.

Tooloee and Llewellyn had, as members of the council’s Finance Committee, drafted proposals that would trim a portion of the city’s operating expenses and put the savings toward “priority” projects including affordable housing, non-motorized transportation upgrades or open space acquisitions.

“Our budget’s about $26 million,” Tooloee said. “If we tighten the belt a bit – by maybe 3 percent – we could achieve a lot in key priorities…which are going underfunded.”

Tooloee said the budget trim, which might amount to $1 million per year, could then be used to finance $12 million in bonds for those projects.

“The need is there, but the funding’s not,” he said.

The two councilmen also wanted to see a proposal on the agenda that would reduce city staffing levels from about 145 to 135 over the next five years.

“Our staffing levels are 23 percent higher than other comparable cities” Tooloee said, citing the city’s recent “benchmarking” study of government efficiency.

“But we’re still on the trajectory to have more,” said Llewellyn, who believes the city can boost efficiency through staff reductions.

“These are policies that the administration doesn’t want to see established,” said Tooloee.

The administration and some members of the council have been at odds in recent years over staffing levels and proposed spending caps, but Kordonowy said Friday that she had encouraged Tooloee and the Finance Committee to include their proposed measures on Wednesday’s meeting agenda.

Kordonowy, noting that the council would not have a quorum with four absences, cancelled the meeting late Wednesday after Tooloee and Councilman Bob Scales, also a member of the Finance Committee, gave word hours before that they’d not attend.

Llewellyn notified the city of his protest absence on Tuesday night, Kordonowy said, while Councilwoman Debbie Vancil said she’d be absent for family reasons days before. Other councilors said they had planned to attend.

Scales said he did not attend because he had late-breaking work to attend to. He did, however, also note his disappointment in what he considers late notification about the meeting’s agenda.

Tooloee and Llewellyn said they did not intend for the meeting to be cancelled.

“I decided not to go, but not to cancel the meeting,” said Llewellyn. “I was surprised it was cancelled. It was a workshop. You don’t need a quorum to have a workshop on Ericksen-Hildebrand.”

Tooloee agreed.

“It’s silly to send 150, 200 people away who wanted to come to that meeting,” he said.

Other councilors were disappointed the discussion on Ericksen-Hildebrand will have to be rescheduled.

“I was surprised and disappointed,” said Councilman Bill Knobloch, who planned to attend. “It was a workshop – very informal with no decisions to be made – so I wonder why the agenda was such a prickly point. I’m disappointed it didn’t go forward because we have a lot to do.”