Some Budget Thoughts for Town Meeting

As I am on the finance committee, several people have asked me about the budget that will be brought to us at town meeting this Saturday. I offer them to you here, as democracy works best when we all have a better understanding of what is before us. What follows are my thoughts only, from my involvement on the finance committee, but not from the committee in any official way. If you aren't going or interested, just ignore this email. Feel free to pass it along to others if you find it useful.

This has been a challenging budget year. The budget process has filled every week for the last couple of months, some weeks we have met twice, at times until 11pm. The budget process included meeting with all the town departments to understand their requests and discuss together where we might make reductions. All departments were asked to present options with 5% and 10% reductions. It has been a good collaboration between the finance committee and the Select Board (SB) - we do not all agree on all line items, but we have had respectful and helpful discussions, and mostly do agree. It has been a challenging budget to pull together, on top of the substantial mid year cuts and transfers we already made.

Town budgets are complex and involve many elements. We have to consider our potential expenses in terms of what we want, need, and are mandated to provide – and what we can afford. Funding for those expenses comes from available funds (free cash, stabilization, and several other smaller funds) and from revenues (state aid, local taxes, fees, and calculations for growth and overlay). This year we anticipate about a 4% reduction in state aid, less growth than usual (ie. new houses which increase the tax base), a lower amount in overlay, and have much less free cash and stabilization to draw from than usual. We also have some significant increases in expenses – especially in vocational education.

Our vocational education expenses increased by $70,600 to $370,600 this year and we expect it to go up to $430,000 next year. We paid for over 1/3 of the increase this year from the unused police chief salary line which is not available going forward. Note that only $93,413 will get reimbursed to us as CH 70 state aid. This gives you some idea of how much the burden of all education expenses is weighted on the town.

In terms of available funds: We have much less than usual. In several prior years we have had about $250,000 in Free Cash to use to balance our budget. This year we started with only $111,000 and used about $61,000 for the budget, leaving us with only about $50,000 for emergencies (which is scary). In addition, we still have to find about $32K this year to pay the balance for the Dec 2008 ice storm - we hope to find as much as we can in unspent balances at year end in June (maybe $25K???) but will have to take the rest from free cash, reducing it even further. And with all the tightening we have done this year and in next year's proposed budgets, free cash will again be pretty limited next year. It is a kind of reverse snowball effect, getting smaller and smaller. Stabilization is low too. The past several years have been balanced on these accounts, depleting them already farther than it is prudent to do.

The expenses must fit within the projected funding. And that bottom line was a hard task master this year as we faced decreases in funding sources along with increases in expenses that are beyond our control. This necessitated significant reductions in the parts of the expense budget that we can control – including 10% or more reductions for most departments, and some staffing cuts – that we did not want to make, but are necessary.

We worked VERY hard trying to arrive at a budget that would NOT require any cuts to employees. We took $100 here, $3,000 there, tightening nearly every line. We cut uniforms from the highway, paper and supplies from offices and more. All the people who get stipends for their services volunteered to go without. Towards the end, we still fell about $50,000 or so short of what we will have funding for.

We then explored any further options we could think of that might still help to avoid laying anyone off, and started with reducing the % of health insurance the town pays from 75% to 65% - a reduction for all town employees. Still that did not save enough to bridge the gap. We explored reducing hours for all staff, but some positions are already at or below the minimum to get the job done (or in some cases to meet state requirements). In fact, we discussed adding hours in a few cases where the reductions made previously are not working out (like assessors and the sewer assistant - the latter pays for itself with sewer fees).

The only place left to cut was personnel. We have only 2 departments that have more than one employee - Police and Highway. We researched data on employees for these 2 departments in surrounding towns. We found that we have been spending significantly more and have more personnel than comparable towns in our area - about equivalent to one person in each of these departments. We cut one position from each department. Cutting just one position was not enough, as one of the crappy realities is that when you cut staff, you usually have to cut more in order to compensate for the increased cost in unemployment. I suspect that the 7 of us (5 Fin Com and 2 SB) represent a spectrum of perspectives about the police issues of the past year, yet we all agreed at the end that this was what we need to do.

Do we still need the new highway truck if we are cutting employees in the highway department?
Yes, it is still a good time to buy the truck because it will make the work easier for those who remain, the interest rates are really good now, and all the trucks are getting old and it is better to spread out the purchases. If we wait, we could end up having to pay for more than one all at once.

I hope this is helpful. See you at Town Meeting: This Saturday, May 1 at Sanderson Academy. And remember to vote too.

Mary Link

Thoughts on Police and Highway Dept. Cuts

The Highway Department and the Police Department are the only departments that have more than one or one and one half employees. So when the Finance Committee and the Select Board looked to cut positions, they decided to cut one from each of these departments. You can't very well cut one position from the Tax Collection department if you only have one position. Or from the Town Clerk's office for that matter.

But you want to know what the real difference is between these two cuts? The one from the Highway Department is going to put a man out on the streets. Someone is actually going to lose his job. No one is going to be out on the street from the Police Department. There are openings for police officers that still need to be filled.

Do not take my interpretation of Warrant Article 11 or Warrant Article 15 for exactness, but please ask the Select Board and the Finance Committee these questions before you leap to conclusions.

Suzanne M Corbett

Town Meeting and Election Tomorrow!

So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.

Voltaire

To the Editor of The Ashfield News

Sally,

Thank you for your timely Blog reply.

I must say, I find it rather confusing, and I hope that, once again, you’ll consider a lengthier and more formal and detailed response in the next issue.

As is readily apparent, some candidate’s statements were longer than the 250 word limit. On this blog, there were three candidates that posted replies to the original Ricki Carroll post mentioning such a limit, and their compliance.

Was the decision made at the editor’s level to ignore this limit for some? Did you consider notifying these three people (David King, Karen Sullivan, and Emily Robertson) that you might consider longer statements from them, given that you approved longer statements from others?

Thank you in advance for considering to offer a clarification of your earlier remarks.

I remain...

A devoted reader...

Paul Swem

Gearing Up for Town Meeting

The Select Board spent much of last evening preparing for possible controversies at this Saturday’s Annual Town Meeting. With the help of Moderator Buz Eisenberg and the Finance Committee, the board reviewed four articles in particular that could generate confusion or opposition.

Two of the articles involve numbers that have been changed since the warrant was published. Due to an accounting error, too much was budgeted under Article 9 for the town clerk’s salary. Also, the salary figures for the sewer system operator in Article 20 will be reduced.

On Article 11, Select Board Chair Ted Murray said he anticipated an amendment that will cut the chief’s salary in half in order to reinstate the sergeant’s salary. No one questioned the source of the amendment because a letter from Bill Perlman proposing it has been widely circulated through town. In previous weeks, as the budget was being hammered out, Murray has argued that an inadequate chief’s salary reduces the chances the town will find a qualified candidate. The Finance Committee also endorses zeroing out the sergeant’s salary.

Article 15, funding the highway department, could create confusion because this year’s budget for the first time separates straight time and overtime. This apparently reduces the winter roads line item significantly, but Murray explained that $57,000 of the straight-time labor line item was formerly included under the winter roads line item. This article also reduces labor costs, effectively eliminating one position on the road crew. The board agreed this is likely to provoke discussion.

Eisenberg reminded the board that any amendments to an article that increase the amount being appropriated could be disallowed because they fall outside the scope of the original article.

David King

Town Meeting and Election in Two Days

While democracy in the long run is the most stable form of government, in the short run, it is among the most fragile.

Madeleine Albright

Letter from The Ashfield News Editor

To Whom It May Concern,

We at the News published the candidates' statements exactly as we
received them following a request for 250 words or less.

S. Straus, editor
The Ashfield News