'Retired' BOF Officials Influenced Financial Policies, Taxpayer Savings, Bond Rating Hikes
As four “retiring” veteran Board of Finance members gathered one late December evening at a local restaurant to visit with The Newtown Bee and to reflect on some of the work they collectively accomplished since their board was reestablished by charter revision 14 years ago, former chairman John Kortze made note of the music playing in the background.
“Listen, that’s ‘New Kid in Town’; kind of ironic, isn’t it?” he remarked.
It was kind of appropriate that the classic Eagles song welcomed Mr Kortze, Harrison “Harry” Waterbury, Joseph Kearney, and Michael Portnoy as they settled down and ordered. For Mr Kortze and Mr Waterbury, December represented the first month free of finance board meetings in nearly a decade and a half.
While for Mr Portnoy and Mr Kearney — whose service was either somewhat shorter or interrupted by breaks in their terms of service — the concept of not having responsibility for overseeing town financial practices was somewhat freeing.
Mr Kortze, who chaired for the entire seven terms of the “new” finance board — Newtown had a board before a previous charter revision did away with it — recalled the first few meetings were still somewhat unstructured, despite the fact that he had experience serving on the Legislative Council’s Finance Committee.
“It was really unclear because we were brand new,” Mr Kortze said. “There wasn’t really anything in writing beyond the charter revision, which was minimal. There wasn’t much more in the statutes, which were very limited and vague. I think we spent a great deal of time figuring out what our role was. As things started coming at us, we tried to figure out what role we had. There was a lot of feeling our way.”
Mr Waterbury recalled that former town finance director Ben Spragg seemed happy that he had six financial professionals to consult with on various matters, and Herb Rosenthal, who was first selectman at the time, was very supportive of the newly seated board.
“He picked us,” Mr Portnoy said. “I think the early years were more about policies, procedures, and process. I knew my role was to oversee and make advisory comments about the budget, giving guidance to the people preparing the budget, especially on the school district side.”
‘The New Guy’
A latecomer to the new board by one term, Mr Kearney said the original six members seemed to have most of the procedures and practices sorted out by the time he arrived.
“During my first term I realized that there were a lot of new things coming up that these guys had never seen before, but it still took me about a year before I stopped feeling like the new guy,” Mr Kearney said.
“We worked so well together, and it didn’t matter what your feeling was on a particular topic,” Mr Waterbury added. “If somebody asked me my feelings, I was not going to respond until I heard what everyone else thought about that particular subject.”
“This is 52 years of experience on this board sitting here,” Mr Kearney said.
“We became the fallback people, the ones people in other departments were turning to for advice — which I think gave us a bit of clout right from the beginning,” Mr Waterbury said. “Since John came over from the council, he was familiar with a few issues that were already in play, so he knew what kind of policies we needed to address.”
Mr Kearney said one of the highpoints of his tenure on the board was seeing how effectively new policies were adopted and followed as the town’s bond rating began to improve.
“When the rating agencies made critical comments, we were all over it,” Mr Kearney said. “So we created policies to address those concerns. And look, we’ve had three ratings upgrades in the last decade, and a triple-A rating from S&P. I think that all comes down to our adherence to the policies we created.”
One of the few carryover items Mr Kortze brought from his time on the council was a practice of tracking and projecting future planned borrowing for large capital projects, a system that became the five-year Capital Improvement Plan, or CIP.
“One of the first things we did was to review it, tweak it, and adopt it as a policy of the board,” Mr Kortze said. “As unconventional as that acronym is, it’s a term that everybody seems to know. If you’re talking to people, the CIP seems to be something everybody knows about. It became a way of thinking.
“And in the last few years, it became a mindset that made sense, and became prudent to taxpayers — it went from a wish list to a roadmap for capital investments.”
Questions Became Important
Each year as the annual budget process ramped up, Mr Waterbury observed that the work of the finance board became increasingly important, not as much for the changes he and his colleagues proposed, but because of the questions they asked.
“You could tell by the body language of the presenters that they were cautious about raising certain subjects like concerns about utility costs — because they knew we or somebody on the board had researched it already,” Mr Waterbury said. “And I think that helped our credibility because we bothered to learn about these subjects.”
“We forced accountability on anybody who was proposing something,” Mr Portnoy said. “They knew they had to come to us and we knew about the subject. We did a lot of stuff based on facts and data, and John was a great leader who always had everything organized for us and kept this board going in the right direction. A few years ago, a lot of the stuff we were doing and suggesting wasn’t widely accepted.”
“Nobody ever thought to consider the financial impact of commodities, especially on the education side,” Mr Waterbury said.
Mr Portnoy pointed out how paying attention to commodities helped save taxpayers $7 million on a proposed high school addition.
“As the cost of the project kept going up, we saw commodities going in the opposite direction,” he said.
“It was probably the most significant thing we did from a one-stop taxpayer savings perspective,” Mr Kearney added.
“I clearly remember the construction experts saying it will never go down,” Mr Portnoy said.
“They said it would only go higher,” Mr Kearney said. “That was our case for rebidding the project, and we came within just a few dozen votes of spending $46 million. But we did everything we could to prevent that from happening. That rebidding saved us $7 million.”
So what decisions kept these former elected officials up nights?
“I think it was every final budget vote that kept me up,” Mr Kortze said. “I think we tried to do whatever we could do to be as efficient as we could to not affect services, especially over the past four or five years. I’m proud we got to a point where our recommendations were only challenged once. And it didn’t keep me up because I thought our recommendation to cut $2½ million from the school budget was wrong — I knew it was spot on. But you were playing with people’s money, so every dollar mattered to me. And that year, the Board of Education ended up with a $180,000 surplus. So the $200,000 the council eventually added back compared to where we ended up — we got pretty darned close.”
Colleagues’ Reflections
First Selectman Pat Llodra described the board’s leadership under Mr Kortze as exemplary — focused, clear, honest, and persuasive.
“There was no doubt about his integrity, or about his high level of understanding of all the issues related to fiscal matters,” Mrs Llodra said. “We are a better community in many ways because of your leadership.”
Mrs Llodra said she expects that the good work the board has done under the four former members will sustain.
“The ‘right thing’ has a way of holding on…you have positioned us well with many of those right things,” she added.
The first selectman described Mr Waterbury and Mr Kearney as the “yin and yang in discussions.”
“Not opposite, but complementary thoughts and beliefs coming from different perspectives. The blend of common sense and passion was intriguing and often inspiring.”
And she complimented Mr Portnoy on his “gentle but savvy way of questioning and probing,” which Mrs Llodra said “helped lift the lid on many difficult issues.”
“I will miss those smiles, and your intelligent but careful pursuit of ideas and issues,” she said of Mr Portnoy.
Collectively, the first selectmen said the departing officials and many of their colleagues who have come and gone made important contributions marked by “balance, effective data analysis, relevance to the important issues, openness to other perspectives, and courage to pursue actions that are right but unpopular.”
Current finance Board Chairman James Gaston, Sr, said, “The people of Newtown owe John, Harry, Joe, and Mike a huge debt of gratitude for their dedication and tireless work. Through their service they have created a solid financial bedrock for the town upon which we may continue to build. Public service is an honor, and they have served honorably. Theirs are large shoes to fill.”
Board of Finance Vice Chair John Godin agreed.
“I think Newtown has been very fortunate to have four members who made the Board of Finance successful, apolitical, and who always looked out for the best interest of the residents and taxpayers from a fiscal perspective,” he said. “I call them my friends, I enjoyed working with them, and I learned a lot working beside them for the past two and a half years. I hope the current board looks at the past finance board as a good model, and works to emulate the collegial atmosphere they maintained. I don’t think anyone really realizes how hard they all worked to benefit everyone in town.”
School Superintendent Joseph V. Erardi, Jr, said his “experience with the Board of Finance last year was one of mutual respect centered on best for children and best for community; thus, at least what I believe, a primary factor in a resounding first referendum pass.
“All four retiring members should be applauded for the giving of their time,” Dr Erardi said, “always being prepared, and an unyielding commitment to fiscal best practice.”
Council Chair Mary Ann Jacob said, she too was “honored to serve with John, Harry, Joe and Mike.”
“Each one of them has such integrity, a love for Newtown, and a real sense of what is right,” Ms Jacob said. “We, as a community, should be so proud of the service these men have given to us. They serve as an example to us and our children of how public service for the good of community is an honored tradition to be proud of.”
While Ms Jacob said she was saddened to see their terms end, she was “grateful for what they have taught me. As a group they showed us that working together, regardless of party, can be achieved when one keeps focused on the good in their community. Not only did they treat each other with respect, but that respect for others led the way in every decision they made. Their legacy of good work is unparalleled.”