Finance Board Budget Cuts Top $1 Million

By John Voket

The Board of Finance completed a marathon stretch of meetings March 1 cutting more than a half-million dollars from both the municipal and school sides of the proposal before sending the $102,232,877 spending package on for consideration by the Legislative Council. The board also endorsed a resolution recommending the council take into consideration any additional savings that might come to the school district and town subsequently, and consider reducing the budget further to accommodate those further savings.

As the 90-minute session drew to a close, chairman John Kortze permitted Po Murray of the group WeCAN (We Care About Newtown) to have a final comment on the proceedings. Ms Murray accused the finance board of meeting in private to vet their ideas about the budget, and demanded that each member of the board individually justify why they supported the individual cuts and the suggestions of where the school board might reduce its budget proposal to accommodate the bottom line cut the finance board is authorized to make.

“I’m concerned that there wasn’t a real discussion between your members [about] why they made the decision about the cuts,” Ms Murray said. “It appears all the discussion was made before this meeting. I would like to have heard each individual member’s discussion about the choices they made.”

Mr Kortze responded, saying, “I’m sure they would be happy to share them with you,” before adjourning the meeting.

The evening began with Ms Murray requesting the finance board hold off on authorizing a $2 million appropriation for open space acquisition until the board develops a better understanding of the maximum residential buildout in the community. She also asked that the public notice for the budget hearings break out the individual stipulations of each future bond issue, and to clarify whether or not there are two separate plans for spending on the Senior Center.

School board member Thomas Gissen then spoke, saying the school board presented a lean budget, saying he was pleased to hear the finance board seemed to think proposals were justified.

“In fact, I thought it was a little too lean,” Mr Gissen said. “There were a few items I wanted to see added back in and the board agreed on one of them. Items are not getting in that definitely should be.”

Volunteer Compensation

The finance board then asked specific questions about certain items, including a proposal by the Fire Commission to create a recruitment and retention program that includes compensating volunteers for on-call responses and training time.

Finance member Joseph Kearney asked how the funding of the program would play out, and whether other benefit sources for volunteer firefighters such as the local tax abatement program might be increased instead of creating the new program.

Michael Burton of the Fire Commission clarified the two-phase program, which would also create a $50-per-day stipend to station day shift responders at two fire houses to get apparatus rolling as soon as calls came in.

First Selectman Herb Rosenthal stepped in confirming that the tax abatement allowance was maximized already, and that benefit could not be increased without an endorsement from the Legislative Council.

Mr Kearney then asked what would happen if the departments were so busy with calls that the allocation is fully expended before the end of the next fiscal cycle.

“My concern was, we are going to be paying people to do a job now,” Mr Kearney said. “If there is not enough money and they are still doing the job, are we going to end up with people saying, ‘now you owe me’? Just make sure there is no future financial liability to the town that can come from those situations.”

Mr Burton answered that it has already been agreed upon by a vote at each department, and that every qualified firefighter would be happy to get what they could, and they would not expect more if the program funding is exhausted.

Patrol Cars

Then the finance board turned its collective attention to the police department, in particular, the program that calls for the replacement of several patrol cars that are included in the budget request.

Finance board member vice chairman James Gaston said he speaks to many police officers in his work, and wanted to know why Newtown is looking to replace cars at about 100,000 miles when other departments can go 150,000 miles or more before being replaced.

Police Chief Michael Kehoe explained that national professional standards dictate the replacement of patrol units is recommended at 100,000 miles. He added that every mile above 100,000 that the vehicles are on the road increases the likelihood of a major maintenance or breakdown that not only compounds the costs of the cars, but takes one or more of a limited number of units off the road.

“Oftentimes we’ll have to spend more than $10,000 to make major repairs on one of the cars only to sell it a few months later,” Chief Kehoe said.

The chief also explained that the mileage belies the wear and tear because virtually every vehicle has many hours of idling time that are not registered on the odometer.

“When they break down they are out of service from between a day to a few weeks. We can’t just go to the yard and pick out a car to replace it, we don’t have the surplus vehicles,” he added.

After the police chief completed answering questions, the finance board discussed the possibility that reductions to the town benefit programs might experience a reduction once the program went out to bid for a possible new carrier.

Picking Priorities

Before the board settled in and began deliberating cuts, Mr Kortze said that his fellow board members have made an effort to be available to taxpayers to answer specific questions they might have, and the board has gone as far as to collectively appear at a special meeting to address concerns from both taxpayer groups and other entities like the school board. He then reminded those in the audience that any specific cuts to school programs and initiatives following a base reduction would be affected by the Board of Education.

He then addressed a perception that certain capital projects are causing others to be discarded or delayed.

“This is not the case. We create a plan based on…prioritized requests that come directly from the town and the Board of Education,” Mr Kortze said. “The public should understand that we haven’t changed any of the priorities presented, and we haven’t changed any of the scheduling of those projects except the Hawley School.”

He added that the Hawley expenditure was pushed out because of the large amount of money requested for the high school expansion. Mr Kortze also addressed a suggestion made by Ms Murray the night before at a public hearing, that the school district consistently returns substantially less in surplus money to the town than comes from the municipal side, suggesting that the town side could afford greater cuts.

“The full surplus on the town side must be returned and added as revenue, but on the education side, my understanding is they are legally prohibited to end the year in the red,” he said. “If the school board ends the year with a reported $9,000 surplus, for example, one must look further to the dollars spent prior to ending up at that number, before a complete conclusion can be reached.”

In the final proposal, the recommendations for cuts included: $250,000 from the Reserve for Capital and Non-Recurring Expenses Fund; $60,000 from health insurance; $100,000 from capital roads; $100,000 from public works equipment and fuel account, adding up to $510,000.

The finance board then reduced the school system by $581,000, suggesting areas for reduction including: $174,000 from health insurance; $100,000 from the fuel account; $175,000 from transportation; $132,000 that would fund two teaching positions at the middle school.

The ending budget proposal was then reduced by $1,091,000 to $102,232,877, and accepted unanimously by the finance board.