Sandy’s mayor wanted to show the city’s governing body a video just shy of three minutes to present her budget proposal. The council chair refused, sparking a squabble among elected officials that lasted over 20 minutes. 

“Happy for the mayor to release the video, the problem is that we have a very tight schedule tonight,” Council chair Cyndi Sharkey said at the May 5 meeting.

The chair would later add that the irony was not lost on her.

The back-and-forth culminated in Mayor Monica Zoltanski playing the video from a laptop during public comment. The audio from the 2-minute and 52-second video reverberated through a podium mic and was cut short by technical delays.

Zoltanski insisted on playing the video, citing a state law requiring city executives to present municipal councils with a message outlining tentative budgets at the first May meeting.

“The budget message, including the video, is part of my duty,” Zoltanski said. “It is intentional, substantive import that the people of Sandy have this information as part of the official record of the mayor’s tentative budget and that it be included as part of the public record … and any attempt to restrict or alter this presentation interferes with my ability to carry out my statutory duty.”

Sharkey replied that the mayor could still convey the budget message verbally.

“We are not impeding you from your statutory duty,” Sharkey said. “In fact, we are inviting you to do so, and from what I’m hearing from our attorney, you don’t get to make the rules on how you do the presentation. The council gets to make those rules. It is called a city council meeting for a reason.”

The council’s attorney also noted that there is precedent for lawmakers receiving the budget message verbally because there have been “more than a hundred budget meetings in Sandy’s history,” and councilors have “not heard or seen a video up until this point.”

“It’s really interesting because this is a fight over a couple of minutes in a video,” council attorney Tracy Cowdell added. “But I understand the council’s position isn’t so much about a video. It's about separation of powers. And how important it is for both branches of government to stay in their lane.”

To speed things along, Councilmember at-large Aaron Dekeyzer moved to vote on watching the mayor’s budget message, but his attempt failed since the motion to proceed was not seconded by another councilor.

“If it’s just a matter of time, we have already exceeded that,” Dekeyzer said. “I’m not sure why we can’t show the video. This is silly.”

Tensions between the mayor and Sharkey appear to have worsened after a contentious mayoral campaign between them.

At a council meeting in January, Zoltanski asserted that a proposed measure to remove elected officials’ vehicle and phone allowances was politically motivated.

“Sandy residents spoke at the last election when [the mayor’s salary] was a central issue to the campaign … and people made a choice,” Zoltanski said before council chair Sharkey interrupted, stressing that a discussion on November’s election was not on the agenda.

“It is on the agenda,” the mayor replied. “You cannot divorce it.”

At the budget meeting, however, Sharkey noted she had already turned down requests to play videos from other presenters earlier in the meeting.

“Prior to being asked by the mayor’s staff, never the mayor, but by the mayor’s staff, to play this video, I had already turned down a request tonight by someone else to play a video,” the chair said. “I am not being inconsistent. There were three videos asked to be played tonight, and I said no to each one of them … in an effort to keep the meeting as short as possible.”

Councilmember at-large Brooke D’Sousa expressed disappointment in the mayor’s conduct, describing it as a “temper tantrum.”

“This is not the first time behavior like this has happened,” D’Sousa said at the meeting. “It usually happens in private meetings and conversations and emails that aren’t public, and the council, trying to be the adult in the room, usually gives in and relents some of our power in the process.”

“I do not appreciate the disparaging comments, and I am taking this job very seriously,” Zoltanski responded. “As the chief executive of the city, elected just months ago with a large majority, people are interested in the mayor’s message in Sandy. It is my job to produce it.”

Contrary to custom, the council adopted the tentative budget without receiving a briefing on its contents. Instead, the mayor’s finance team gave a 90-minute rundown of the spending plan after its unanimous approval.