Selectmen Pare Departmental Budget Requests

By Jan Howard

 By Monday night this week, the Board of Selectmen had trimmed approximately $559,000 from agency budget requests for the 2004–2005 fiscal year. And more cuts are expected before the selectmen pass their budget on to the Board of Finance for review and possible changes.

The Board of Education budget request is also to be submitted to the Board of Finance.

First Selectman Herb Rosenthal said that before the budget is finalized the selectmen would review some of the department requests for possible additional cuts.

“It’s looking pretty grim,” he said.

The selectmen met Wednesday night with representatives of several town departments, including the Police Department, Parks and Recreation, and C.H. Booth Library, and made several changes at that time. The total of the reductions made on Wednesday were not available at press time.

The selectmen will continue their review of the budget on Monday following their regular meeting at 7:30 pm in the library community room. It is expected that further revisions will be made during that session.

There were compromises and cuts and a few increases as the selectmen continued their review of the $30,638,638 budget on Monday, which as originally presented was $608,623 more than the current year budget of $30,030,015.

One of the first cuts the selectmen made was to the capital road improvement fund, which had started out at $2 million. The selectmen decided to drop that number back to $1,850,000 because they felt the $2 million was too large an increase from the $1,750,000 allocated in the current budget. The selectmen had also cut approximately $285,000 from the highway department’s capital request.

Other major cuts to department requests included $15,000 from grants and $122,000 from capital from the fire department budget, which eliminated a car and modified a request for a tanker truck from the $1,350,820 original request.

They also cut $3,200 from the capital account of the emergency management/dive team. Mike McCarthy told the selectmen that lighting for night calls was the most critical item in the dive team’s budget. However, in obtaining support for the generator and night operation lighting, his request for dry suits was eliminated.

The emergency management/dive team budget includes funding for a one-day, townwide training operation, which may be reimbursed on the revenue side of the budget, Mr Rosenthal said.

Requests from social service agencies from outside Newtown that provide services for Newtown residents were approved at the current year’s budgeted amounts, as follows: Danbury Regional Commission on Children, request $2,500, $2,200 approved; Women’s Center of Danbury, request $7,000, $6,250 approved; Ability Beyond Disability, request $5000, $4,500 approved; and Literacy Volunteers, request $2,000, $1,000 approved.

An increase of $7,534 in the paramedic program was approved, up to $150,000, and the Family Counseling Center received an increase of $2,000, from $52,000 to $54,000. Minor increases were approved for Shelter of the Cross, WeCahr, and the Northwest Regional Mental Health Board.

Karen Massena of Shelter of the Cross told the selectmen that her agency has opened a second home to serve elderly homeless from the Greater Danbury area. Three Newtown residents have been served by the agency.

“We are the only program in the state that serves this population,” she said.

Terry Blackmer, director of the Family Counseling Center, said the agency serves over 600 people. Forty percent of its clients reside in Newtown, with the remainder from Danbury and the surrounding area.

“We see a broad range of clients,” she said, who suffer from depression, anxiety, or mental illness. She said they have seen an increase in the number of psychiatric cases in children.

The Tercentennial Committee request of $125,000 was reduced to $75,000, with the remaining $50,000 to be allocated in the 2005/06 fiscal year budget.

A compromise was reached in the original requests for 18 new computers for various departments. The number has been pared down to ten because some computers currently being used would be recycled to less critical procedures.

Carmella Amodeo and Kevin Koschel of the Technology Department presented information regarding the hardware and software that would be needed and professional licenses that would be required.

They discussed the Geographical Information System, a comprehensive data system that every department can use. Mr Rosenthal said approximately $600,000 has been invested in the program over the past years, and it is hoped that in the future it would be available for use by the public.