First Selectman Outlines Multipoint Agenda For The New Year

By John Voket

First Selectman Pat Llodra has resolved to move into 2011 with a four-point plan she hopes will lead to a successful year for both the town government and the community as a whole. Navigating with the guideposts of finances, planning, collaboration, and technology, the first selectman said, “These themes are integrated and intertwined…every action and decision is influenced by one or more of these considerations.”

The finances theme is underpinned by a further breakdown that includes debt, fund balance, bond ratings, and local property tax burden.

“Our debt is manageable, given our policy of a debt cap of no more than ten percent of the total town budget,” Mrs Llodra explained. “In the short term, we have projects and plans for capital growth that remain beneath this ten percent cap.”

But the first selectman is hoping to reduce the town debt to nine or even eight percent of the total budget.

“I believe that we are in a healthier financial position with less annual debt load,” Mrs Llodra said. “This will be difficult to achieve, but is possible with patience and willingness to wait a bit longer for those improvements which are needed and wanted, but are not critical to our town’s continued success.”

Newtown’s fund balance policy obligates maintaining no less than five percent of the total annual budget in undesignated reserves.

“While this is an appropriate and meaningful policy, I believe that greater fund balance, more in the neighborhood of nine percent, will help Newtown’s long-term fiscal strength,” she said. At the same time, Mrs Llodra said she hopes to reduce reliance on fund balance to offset taxation by $1 million in the next fiscal year, “thus ridding ourselves of the practice of using our savings account for operational expenses.”

Much as with a business or personal loan, the first selectman said Newtown’s creditworthiness is a critical factor in determining the cost for using money to be paid off over time.

“Newtown has enjoyed a favorable uptick in the bond rating, much of that having to do with our debt and fund balance policies. Further, the bonding agency cites our CIP process, our commitment to educating the community about financial practices, and our solid record of paying debt,” she said. “Recently, Newtown was granted by Standard & Poor’s a financial strength score of ‘strong,’ one of very few municipalities in Connecticut to be so recognized.”

Other Financial Tools

In regard to Newtown’s capital nonrecurring fund, Mrs Llodra plans to continue utilizing the account to help plan and save for future expenses. She pointed to current capital earmarks to replace fire engines and tankers at a cost of more than a million dollars over two years.

“The Board of Selectmen recommends that we save $100,000 in the capital nonrecurring fund annually, then bond the balance when we need to make the purchase,” she said. “This approach reduces the need to borrow money and moves us closer to the practice of planning and saving for known capital expenses.”

The first selectman said planning is an ongoing endeavor for both immediate and longer-term implementation.

“Changes in the development of the CIP and in the annual budget enhance the planning function of those financial tools,” Mrs Llodra said. “The debt cap is my starting point for the creation of the annual CIP. I can be reasonably confident about what funds are available each year for five years out, given our current debt.”

The annual operating budget is also an important tool to support planning for known expenses, she explained.

“Allocation of resources through the annual budget and the capital improvement plan is an important planning function of the town’s administrative and executive office,” Mrs Llodra said. “It is good practice to ‘level’ costs as much as possible across multiple years to address known expenses for projects and purchases that if deferred may have public health and safety consequences.”

Mrs Llodra said she uses the strategy to address “have to” while differentiating those costs from “want to.”

Long-Term Planning

Mrs Llodra said in the coming year, planning efforts with more long-term implementation are associated with Fairfield Hills, Parks and Recreation, municipal space needs, economic growth, and the Plan of Conservation and Development.

She said the Fairfield Hills Master Plan Review Committee was appointed this past spring to review the themes of the master plan and make recommendations to the board of selectmen. The Parks and Recreation Department and Commission developed a plan for Eichler’s Cove and have updated their plan of development for Dickinson Park.

And a municipal space needs study will kick off in late spring.

“Newtown has a number of known facility needs, such as for police services and seniors, a community center, emergency services, maybe even fire service, and others,” Mrs Llodra said. “We also have a number of buildings to consider for use and reuse. We need a better understanding of how to ‘marry’ the needs with the facilities before we embark upon a program of new construction.”

She said the Economic Development Commission recently completed a survey of the town’s commercial enterprises (see report on the Business Page in this edition of The Bee.)

“The results of that survey will coalesce into a body of recommendations to help us grow our economic base,” she said. “That growth needs to be consistent with our community culture and long-range vision.”

Finally, the Plan of Conservation and development is being revised.

“All the planning efforts cited here, and others, will be incorporated into the POCD,” Mrs Llodra said. “Both the Board of Selectmen and the council are engaged in an effort to boost the power of the POCD as a tool to guide and inform decisionmaking for community development.”

The first selectman also believes advancing Newtown’s “tools of technology” will help meet the needs of citizens to have better access to government decisionmaking and processes.

“We have been able, finally, to activate our communications control room housed in the council chambers and now create a DVD of many meetings of the Board of Finance and Legislative Council,” Mrs Llodra said. Other meetings are recorded when possible with DVDs archived in the office of the first selectman.

These meeting DVDs are available for viewing upon request. The next step in improving access to information is to add Video On Demand (VOD) to the town’s website, which is also being updated and improved.

“The new town website will be much easier to navigate, and includes more information, forms, and documents,” Mrs Llodra said. “The site will also include a Community Calendar function allowing nongovernmental groups the ability to post events.”

She said both the new website and VOD will be “live” before the end of January. In addition, Newtown’s IT department continues to develop a work-order system and permitting that will allow better tracking and documentation of work performed by municipal departments and contractors.

“It is our hope to integrate the work-order system with our GIS system,” Mrs Llodra said.

Collaboration Pays

Mrs Llodra is also moving forward promoting collaboration, “within the governmental structure, including education, and between government and private interests (that) will provide our community with opportunities to grow and improve our services, our programs, and our facilities.”

Among proven examples that are already paying dividends, Mrs Llodra identified the town and the Board of Education’s collaboration on securing one insurance consultant. 

“Not only did this effort save money, it also provided for better and more timely information during budget development,” she said. “Next, we instituted the practice of self-funding our medical benefits insurance. Again, this was achieved through collaboration between the Town and the school board garnering a savings of considerable sums over the projected 20 percent or more increase in costs as quoted by the insurance carrier.” 

Moving into the next fiscal cycle, the first selectman said the town and school administration will pursue a competitive bid in the insurance marketplace to determine if the current carrier is providing the best price for administering the benefits plan. 

She also said the community can expect to see a growing trend of collaboration in the form of public-private partnerships.

“The recently opened skate park at Dickinson is the product of a successful collaboration between the government and private citizens. Soon we will be breaking ground on a new animal control facility,” Mrs Llodra pointed out. “That, too, is the result of a long-term mutual effort between government and private efforts, notable Canine Advocates for Newtown. And, we are engaged in discussions with the private facility known as NYA to explore the possibility for a Parks and Recreation community center.”

In the coming year, she said residents can look to the next phase of the Sandy Hook Streetscape Plan as another successful example of public-private partnerships.