Officials Offer Post-Election Thoughts—

Anatomy Of A Five-Percent Budget Cut

By John Voket

Was it an achievable goal — doable with fresh thinking and leadership ready to act against traditional practices; or a provocative slogan that had little or no strategic planning to back it up?

And was the Independent Party of Newtown’s idea of effecting a five percent town-side budget cut exclusive of debt service over a two-year period a factor in the outcome of last week’s local elections?

Some argue that taxpayers never had a chance to understand the idea, because local Independents declined to reveal any specifics. But an IPN council veteran said the party’s plan to hold details close to the vest was strategically made so as not to give political opponents an opportunity to criticize or exploit it.

Incumbent IPN Councilman Kevin Fitzgerald, who lost his seat by eight votes following a recount, told The Bee two days after the election, “I don’t know how much of an impact the decision not to provide the detail behind the five percent cut had on the outcome, but yes, it certainly cost us a lot of votes. Probably more than we expected.”

Neither Mr Fitzgerald nor other party leaders would speculate whether confusion or frustration over the tax cut pledge moved a majority of voters to reject all but one of the IPN candidates on the ballot.

Throughout his campaign for the first selectman seat, IPN Selectman William Furrier emphasized the five-percent-cut commitment on the party’s website, on social networking blog posts, during The Newtown Bee’s candidates’ debate, and the pledge was posted on lawn signs that popped up all over town the week before the election.

But when asked for details, Mr Furrier would only repeat that he planned to employ an accounting philosophy called “Track, Score, and Report” to help better monitor, benchmark, and promote information about various budgetary and operating expenses.

It is possible by monitoring audio transcripts and video of the last two budget deliberations that voters understood such a system was already in place, without the title, in the form of day-to-day budget documentation and software. Newtown’s Finance Director Robert Tait confirmed that town computer systems provide those exact capabilities.

When pressed for some level of how the plan would roll out, Mr Furrier said he planned to phase reductions in over two years with immediate but incremental cuts in year one, and the balance of the five percent taken in the 2013-14 fiscal cycle. The IPN also promised to not make any reductions to school district budget requests. Selectman candidate Po Murray justified that aspect of the plan at the debate saying the IPN’s targeting just town-side spending was balanced by multiple reductions to school budget requests in recent years.

Mr Fitzgerald said there was much analysis and discussion inside the party on where the spending reductions would come from, “and in fact the target was even higher so that the plan for five percent would be better understood.” But he disagreed with Ms Murray’s assertion that school district cuts would be off the table.

“The education side might be tougher if the intent is to preserve core education, specifically in the classroom,” Mr Fitzgerald said in part of an e-mail response. “But we are at the point where there should be no sacred cows if we are to protect what is truly important to the people and the character of Newtown.”

 

Finding $1.8 Million

According to data supplied by the first selectman’s office, the current town-side operating budget excluding school and town debt service is $27.8 million. A net five percent reduction to that figure — minus interest savings from a planned March 2012 bond refunding — would equal $1.4 million.

Add to that an anticipated $200,000 increase in town employee health care costs, and about $250,000 in already negotiated wage and benefit contracts with town bargaining units, and the actual town-side hit to achieve a five-percent reduction would be $1.85 million.

The first selectman said the only way to achieve that reduction after negotiated wage and benefit increases would be to significantly reduce services. That would be accompanied by workforce reductions in the three largest town-side departments: Public Works, police, and Parks and Recreation.

“All the other departments, which consist of one to just a few people, are as tightly staffed as possible already,” Mrs Llodra said. “So you would have to go to those departments that had a workforce big enough to cut and still retain some services. Those departments would be our police, highway, and parks workers.”

Mr Tait illustrated that as jobs were eliminated, raises and benefits accruing to those jobs would theoretically supplement savings. Mrs Llodra added, however, that the level of staff reductions required to approach a five-percent reduction would be immediately obvious to taxpayers.

“Look at what we’ve done already, closing the landfill just one day a week and cutting hours at some parks facilities. It’s affecting people and they notice,” Mrs Llodra said.

The subject of achieving maximum budget savings through job cuts appears to be one of the primary reasons why the IPN decided to hold off on promoting details of their five-percent pledge, according to Mr Fitzgerald.

“The plan was to lay out in slightly less detail than we had prepared those areas and functions from which five to seven percent in reductions might come, subject of course to a full review by the town department heads,” Mr Fitzgerald said. “But when preparing for the debate, we looked at how anti-IPN folks and groups have misused information as a way to ‘paint’ the Independent Party as something different than what it is and we grew concerned that these anti-IPN folks and other party leaders would use our spending reduction plan to mislead potential voters.”

The IPN councilman said “it would not surprise us if IPN’s recommendations to be more cost-effective in the Highway Department would be rewritten by the RTC leadership in a letter to your editor that reads ‘IPN Plans To Cut Highway Staff,’ which is not true.”

Unanimous Budget Support

Over the two years that comprised the first terms of Mr Furrier and Mrs Llodra, town-side spending was held to about that of Newtown’s 2008 municipal budget. Mrs Llodra noted that each of the two town-side budget proposals during that term had been endorsed by her 2009 and 2011 running mate, Selectman Will Rodgers, as well as Mr Furrier.

Mrs Llodra said her goal for 2012 would be for a town-side budget proposal with no increase in spending over the current year, a goal also publicly supported by James Gaston, the Board of Finance vice chair who won a seat on the Board of Selectmen on Election Day.

“Our current budget is already three percent less than when Will Rodgers and I took office in 2009. It is essentially the same as the fiscal 2008 budget,” Mrs Llodra said. “But even a zero-percent increase in the town budget will be difficult to achieve with the $700,000 in added school and town debt service and the already negotiated wage and benefit packages we’ve agreed to for that period.”

Mr Fitzgerald still believes, however, that a five percent or greater town-side cut is achievable.

“Having been involved in the five percent spending reduction analysis by Bill, Po and others, a flat budget, and even a zero-percent increase on the town side is a no-brainer, and so a target for spending reductions should be greater.”

Although neither he nor IPN Chairman Bruce Walczak responded to requests for their thoughts on the issue following the election, Mr Furrier stated during the debate that he and his fellow selectmen ran through a review of all departmental requests, but never had a discussion about how the overall budget might be reduced.

An Attention-Getter

But Mrs Llodra countered that during both the 2010 and 2011 budget cycles, and throughout his entire first term as selectman, Mr Furrier never requested to her, or publicly, to initiate any expanded discussion about reductions of any kind, either departmental or wholesale, which is borne out by selectmen’s meeting audio transcripts and minutes.

Board of Finance Chairman John Kortze, who won reelection and will serve beside Carol Walsh, the sole IPN candidate to win an elected office in 2011, classified the five-percent pledge as “absolutely hollow rhetoric, contrived to catch attention.”

Mr Kortze believes so many IPN candidates were rejected by voters because the minor party’s lead platform lacked detail.

“It appeared that the IPN did not want to offer detail, and that resonated with the voters,” Mr Kortze said, adding, “I’m not sure it could be done. But Pat [Llodra] still looked at what the impact on services and our quality of life would be, and she agreed she wasn’t willing to go there.”

Mr Fitzgerald defended the idea, however, saying it was never about cutting for the sake of cutting.

“It was with keeping an eye on maintaining a healthy balance of service levels that people enjoy in Newtown,” he said. “It was about knowing where the opportunities could be found and then, if supported by the public on Election Day, working with the finance director, town staff, and department managers to examine it further and validate it.”

Mr Fitzgerald said the IPN recognized that town staff and department heads know better than anyone what can and cannot be done.

“Clearly we understood that until then, the IPN would be remiss to make any promises about where cuts would come from.”