The City of Williamsport intends to repay the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) about $1.4 million due to seven years of criminal misdeeds by a former administrator, but the account officials plan to use — called the legislative contingency fund — is diminished.

The remaining $20,000 in legislative contingency is not going to touch the amount of money that the city eventually needs to put towards payments to the FTA, Councilwoman Liz Miele, chairwoman of the city finance committee, said recently during a council meeting as council passed a transfer ordinance on final reading and a resolution to make the second and third payments to the FTA.

“We are going to need to figure out a longer term plan,” she said.

These second and third payments of $35,000 will be made but council has started to discuss where the remainder of the payments will be taken from and it is expected to hear about a plan from Mayor Derek Slaughter, according to Jamie Livermore, city finance director.

Currently, what action taken included moving $50,000 from the River Valley Transit Authority (RVTA) local share that the city budgeted into legislative contingency with the intention of putting that amount toward the repayments.

“We did discuss with River Valley Transit Authority and there was nothing left for the local share,” Livermore said. “We moved $50,000 into legislative contingency to cover the majority of those payments,” she said. “The plan is to pay both of those payments from legislative contingency. We have a plan and we can make those two payments.”

“Obviously, we had started the year with $75,000 in that (legislative contingency) budgeted line item, most of it which was promised or intended for various and sundry purposes,” she said.

Legislative contingency is a place the city tends to put money when it thinks it will have additional expenses toward other items that come up. Ideally, the city wants to keep it in legislative contingency until it knows what the expenses are upcoming.

The finance committee has encouraged the administration to figure out where these funds were coming from and to open discussion with city council if that is what is required.

“In the end it is an administrative move to transfer funds into legislative contingency to cover the expenses we anticipated in that line,” Miele said.

Council, last month, authorized the repayment of outstanding debt owed to the FTA, which included a payment plan beginning with the first installment of $35,000.