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Council declines to change Human Rights Commission funding request process
Summary
A proposed code amendment to formalize the Human Rights Commission’s funding request process and create a line item in the city budget failed after council members raised concerns about unequal treatment of boards and loss of council control over specific expenditures.
The Saint Joseph City Council voted down an ordinance that would have amended Section 18‑105 of the code (Human Rights) to create a clearer path for the Human Rights Commission to submit funding requests to the city manager and for those requests to be placed in the annual budget.
Council member 5 said the amendment risked privileging one commission over other boards and worried the council would lose oversight of how the funds were used. The city manager told council the change would align requests with the budget process — the city manager would decide whether to include a request in the proposed budget, after which the council retains authority to approve or modify the budget. The city manager also explained that expenditures below a certain administrative threshold (approximately $25,000) are approved administratively under procurement policy.
Council considered an amendment to require council approval when a specific expense is later identified, but members noted operational constraints (needing two to three weeks to prepare a resolution). The motion to approve the ordinance failed on a recorded vote (2 ayes, 6 nays) and the code remains unchanged based on that vote.
Council members and staff also noted the existing path to request one‑time appropriations — for example, the meeting earlier in the agenda that included a $500 appropriation request to Missouri Western State University for a Human Rights Commission event — can still come directly to council without the code change.
