Over nearly two decades since its creation, the local Board of Finance has overseen and helped administer hundreds of millions of state and federal revenues, taxpayer dollars, grants, gifts, special funds, and donations, while advising on municipal and school district budgets, appropriations, investing, and capital spending.

But as 2021 and the board’s 20-year anniversary approach, board chair Sandy Roussas has decided to lead the current board — which includes Christopher Gardner, Keith Alexander, Ned Simpson, John Madzula, and Matthew Mihalcik — on a review and examination of its present-day role.

That review began in earnest July 23.

After previously distributing some materials, Roussas said she wanted to give members an opportunity to provide their input on how the board could better address issues like budget forecasting and occurrences that could affect the financial status of the municipality in general, as well as state finances and their impact on Newtown’s financial landscape.

Simpson suggested there may be several things the finance board could do without necessitating a charter revision, but acknowledged his ideas would require the consultation and buy-in of the Legislative Council.

In regard to the finance board’s recent recommendation of an updated Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) policy, Simpson noted that it had gone to the council and was currently being reviewed by committee. At the same time, the finance board has already approved a CIP calendar based on the new policy.

He noted that a revised Fund Balance Policy, also now in front of the council, was relegated to committee as well, where its language could be changed or amended.

“It would seem to me that we could save legislative council volunteers’ time if they would agree that any of these policies we send to them would get an up or down vote. And if it gets a down vote, send it back to us to sort out the problem,” Simpson said.

He added that the Board of Education and town are involved with updating their CIPs and preliminary budget preparation. Having done many budgets himself, Simpson said he always preferred when he received parameters, “so when you came to review and stayed within the guidance percentages, there wasn’t a lot of discussion,” unless there was a compelling reason to exceed or reduce those percentages significantly.

He said those would be the issues that would need cooperative buy-in by other boards to avoid the need for such practices to be deliberated further and codified in a charter revision.

Mihalcik agreed, saying that giving town and school district budget makers parameters in which to work, along with creating and maintaining committees to work collaboratively with the council and school board on financial policies and practices would create an environment where “we are all in agreement about what we’re thinking financially for the town.”

Alexander suggested that having the council tinker with recommended policy language after it was crafted carefully by finance board members, often over long periods of time and many meetings, duplicates effort.

“If we were a subcommittee of the council, like the Board of Finance was at some point, then it would be much more of an up/down vote when it came out of committee,” Alexander said. Regarding setting advance parameters and budgeting percentages ahead of time, Alexander said as a former school board official and chairman, “my push to the superintendent was always ‘let me see what you need,’ to provide the education to our students rather than giving them a number.”

“Guidance is great as long as we’re not clamping them down,” Alexander added.

Gardner said it all comes down to planning.

“Not only short-term planning, but looking out over a decade,” Gardner said, adding that town Finance Director Robert Tait’s budget forecasts had been helpful — if not “a little scary.”

“The more we are on top of long-term expenses, and providing a forecast for the Board of Ed and the council where the town might be,” without setting hard budgeting mandates, and incorporating collaborative budget development, “that’s how we’re going to find success here across the board.”

“We’re on a good path,” he added, “and I’d really like to dig into this ten-year forecast.”

Madzula concurred, adding that getting guidance like Alexander did in his tenure leading the school board would provide a lot of guidance in developing the kinds of percentage goals and budget parameters that worked so well for Simpson in the private sector.

“Looking at the budget forecast itself almost sets the parameters,” Roussas observed. “If we’re all comfortable with the numbers we see on the spreadsheet.”

The finance chair also saw the merit of getting a good idea of need from budget planners on both the town and school sides of the equation.

By having planning numbers as “a guidepost,” Roussas said the finance board would be well positioned in cases where budget requests suddenly ballooned or contracted significantly.

“That would, or should, prompt some increased scrutiny,” she said.

Roussas thanked Tait for his foresight in developing budget forecasts.

“It’s good to see in concrete numbers what our mill rate would look like if we increased budgets in certain ways,” she said.

First Selectman Dan Rosenthal, who attended the virtual meeting, said the finance board’s role should be to determine what the community can afford to spend in each successive budget proposal.

Simpson then introduced the idea of considering going to a zero-based budgeting practice, admitting it has its advantages and disadvantages.

Hearing no immediate reaction from her other colleagues, Roussas admitted that the finance board may not be in the position to introduce such a practice.

After further discussion, Rosenthal said a better plan might be to earmark funds and independently review department costs and use strategic reviews to develop spending rotations. Tait added that the practice could complement a ten-year budget forecast.

Bringing the conversation to an end for now, Roussas also agreed that Simpson’s suggestion of addressing redundancy occurring when finance recommendations go to the council committees should be discussed further with members of that elected panel “to figure out logistics from their standpoint.”