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Notes provided by: Colleen Kirby Notes from Budget and Revenue Task Force March 29, 2004, 6pm. These are not official minutes. Attending: Kevin Greeley, Kathleen Dias, Diane Mahon, Charlie Lyons, Charlie Foskett, Al Tosti, Fred (from treasurer's office?), Marie Krepelka, Nancy Galkowski, Rob Adelson, Brian Sullivan, Kay Donovan, Suzanne Owayda, one other person The good news: Brian Sullivan has rearranged various items to bring the $3.8M deficit down to $2.28M. The bad news: this still leaves a deficit of $1.27M for the schools and $1M for the rest of the town. There was a detailed handout from Brian Sullivan but I don't have a scanner so I'll summarize. New revenues include increases from fees: +$100,000, new growth an additional $150,000, can use $700,000 from the Stabilization fund (which currently stands at $1.7M), and $400,000 from the tip fee Stabilization fund. Also can reduce street light expenses by $100,000 and snow funds by $50,000. There is $2.2M in the Building Trust fund which TM could authorize to send to legislature for Home rule petition and perhaps it could pass in July according to what Diane M. heard from Sen. Havern that maybe we could access for next year's budget. Using O'Neill the cuts may be distributed to Town Manager ($900,000) 39.4%, Education 55.6%, Selectmen 2.1%, Fin Com .02%, Treasurer 1.5%, Assessors .5%, warrant .2%. Proposed cuts by Town Manager: Public Works: $200,000 cut from Sanitation Collection contract, $200,000 in personnel cuts; Police: $50,000 cuts in police personnel; Fire: $50,000 cuts in personnel; Library $43,000 cuts in personnel; Human Services $75,000 cuts in personnel; $25,000 cut in expenses going to Legal (worker's comp. account). This leaves $200,000 unaccounted for in the Town Manager's budget. This $200,000 could come from a decrease in Health Insurance benefits of 5% for employees or a decrease in the raise offered. Brian requests input from BoS on priorities before he makes his final recommendations. Al Tosti pointed out that reserves are currently very low. He is hoping the House budget is released soon and the Fin Com will meet again April 12th, 14th and 17th hopefully with the House numbers in hand and with recommendations from the BoS for what cuts to make. He hopes that if any override is proposed that it take into account next year and the year after that too. Diane Mahon said she didn't think we could cut any more services this year and that we may need to go to the voters for an override. She also noted the legislation that exempts poor seniors from property tax increases. She also said every employee has been looking for cost savings. Kay says the current school budget is responsible and is below where we were 2 years ago. She said we are making every saving we can. She said we're asking for trouble if we cut more, we don't want to start having children go out of town and then we pay for them to go out of district. We've already raised fees. We need to restore the services at the schools to get back up to the state averages. It was expressed by several at the meeting that employees need to share in the cost of the insurance or through lower pay increases before we can ask the townspeople for an override. Maybe we could move to one insurance carrier for some savings because more carriers means coverage costs more. Many wanted to see moving forward on negotiations and that maybe some form of coalition bargaining could help. Kevin Greeley said we need to decide which way to go:
Charlie Foskett said we could also solve the deficit with lower increase in raises than the proposed 3%, with increased productivity by employees (eg. more kids per classroom), employees sharing more in burden of health care costs. Charlie Lyons also mentioned that we could solve the deficit with a 0% raise for all employees for FY04 (the current fiscal year for which no contract has yet been agreed to) and then a 3% raise for FY05. He also wanted to see some forward movement on contracts (which I think meant on the health insurance issue in particular although he also expressed lower raises being acceptable) before he would agree to any override. There was some concern that the public might not support a tax increase although some thought that other than the contract negotiation issue, the town has already shown it has tightened its belt as much as it can. There will be another BRTF meeting in 2 weeks, April 12th, 6 pm at which the BoS will give their official recommendations of how to proceed. They would also like to hear a 5 min. report about what the V2020 group learned about creating a Dept. of Finance such that the Treasurer's, Assessor's, Controller's, other offices are put together in one department for longer term restructuring and possible cost savings. And suggestions for what we should do differently next year in terms of budget planning. It was expressed that the BoS needs to come together on these issues. Tomorrow night at 6pm there will be a goal setting session at the Whittemore Robins house with the BoS and the Town Manager Brian Sullivan. I do hope someone attends and takes good notes as I will not be able to attend and I really want to know what goals our Board of Selectmen express. These are my notes, taken to best of my ability and are no way official minutes or notes of any of the boards or individuals sited in my report. If I got anything wrong please let me know and I'll fix them. Comment: I was quite impressed by the clear handout provided by the Town Manager and the work he has already done for the town in providing recommendations for this budget in such a short time. I look forward to seeing budget planning in operation before next year so we'll have some sense in September whether or not we'll have a deficit to deal with. Although that does depend on whether or not we get any curveballs thrown from the State House again. SPOT
offers these notes as a service to the community. |
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