Finance Bd Reviews Pension

 Deficit, Discrimination Suit

Just when the finance board thought they had heard the worst of it during its first night of municipal side budget deliberations, when official learned the local pension fund might need as much as a $1 million injection to counter a 20 percent loss since last June, Town Hall employees union Chapter President Karen Pratt-Szilagy dropped a bomb during public commentary at the beginning of night two.

“We are naturally concerned that the Board of Selectmen may be discriminating against our chapter on the basis of gender,” the union rep said, confirming to The Newtown Bee after the meeting that her members were considering filing a discrimination complaint against the town, after the Board of Selectmen declined to extend her unit’s current contract an additional year, as they had done for the town highway workers’ union.

“As I am sure you are aware, the Board of Selectmen agreed to a similar contract extension for the union representing the town’s highway department workers in December, and ratified a three-year contract with the town’s Parks and Recreation Department with similar wage increases in November,” Ms Pratt-Szilagy said reading from a statement. “It should be noted that the membership of the highway department’s union is exclusively male and the Park and Rec’s Department is all male with one exception; ours is three-quarters female.”

Additional commentary came from representatives of the C.H. Booth Library Board. Library board President William Lavery said as the local economy tightened, patronage and requests for library services exploded.

With that in mind, he requested the finance board consider returning the same town-side contribution to the library’s budget as the current year.

Considering the town budget proposal is about 60 percent less than the school district’s request, finance officials were forced to drill deeply into budget lines looking for dimes versus the dollars that might be needed to bring in the school side of the budget at a number voters might embrace on the first referendum attempt. This goal was seldom mentioned, but never far from the surface during much of the nearly ten hours of talks held by the finance board over four evenings.

Night one posed questions on the town side concerning the costs of the Lake Zoar and Lake Lillinonah Authorities; the town’s economic and community development official; and the selectmen’s decision to construct a leaseback arrangement to fund demolition and parking lot construction at Fairfield Hills, versus pitching the project for capital funding to be bonded.

First Selectman Joe Borst, Finance Director Robert Tait, and Town Attorney David Grogins were on hand during the second session of town side talks March 9, attempting to answer questions posed March 4. Officials from the Economic Development Commission and the Fairfield Hills Authority spoke during public participation, recommending the town retain the community development director.

A representative of the Lake Zoar Authority attended to explain the ways his group was working to make underwriting lake services more fair and equitable among the four participating towns, while representation by the Lake Lillinonah Authority was conspicuously absent.

When facing questions about the leaseback versus bonding the demolition of Greenwich House and construction of a Fairfield Hills parking lot for the Newtown Youth Academy, Attorney Grogins told finance officials that in many situations, lessees or tenants perform work for, and are reimbursed by, landlords. The finance director confirmed, however, that in the long run, bonding, which is now in the plan for the outstanding debt, would be the least costly way to pay for the work.

The meeting continued with the board and town officials discussing the possibility of seeking wage concessions from local unions. Mr Borst confirmed that town side units would not come to the table to discuss concessions unless their counterparts on the school district side were willing to do the same. When asked what he would do if taxpayers rejected the budget proposal in a referendum, the first selectman said he would have to look at wages, personnel cuts, or reducing capital costs.

Finance Chair John Kortze countered that talks about wage concessions should be initiated now, not at the point when the budget is facing rejection at referendum.

In the final hour of night two, finance board members even turned attention to possibly cutting the contributions being made to nonprofit agencies in town and throughout the region, which serve Newtowners. Finance board member Joe Kearney expressed concern that his board had woefully little information about how many of the nonprofit and service agency recipients operated, and that he wanted more financial information before he would feel recommending the same types of increases that were normally issued year after year as a matter of tradition.