CIP Overhaul—

Council Discusses Ideas About Streamlining Funding Requests

By John Voket

Finance Director Robert Tait has taken his plans to electronically streamline annual departmental budget requests and supersized it. During a June 17 meeting, Legislative Council members learned that Mr Tait is creating a new paperless system for information regarding big ticket capital purchases, encompassing in some cases, multimillion-dollar projects like the high school expansion.

During the first of what Chairman Will Rodgers said will be a multistep process, the council will work with the finance director fine tuning an electronic application process that virtually eliminates any types of interpretive language, categorically aligns multiple requests into a system that is easy to sort and prioritize, while preventing mathematical mistakes as the scope and costs of capital proposals readjust as they become more imminent.

During what at times seemed more like a brainstorming session, Councilman Gary Davis suggested changing the process by which the annual CIP proposal is handled by giving the council first and last input versus just taking the final pass on eliminating, reprioritizing, or modifying capital requests. Citing what may very well become a new CIP system under the Board of Education, Mr Davis said he also liked the idea of increasing the CIP projection period from its current five years.

“If we were to take a look at this anew, what would be a timeframe that would be ideal to manage this system, look ahead and have better planning ability? Is five years great, or should we be looking at ten like the Board of Ed is looking at?” Mr Davis asked.

“Anything out ten years, obviously the estimate is fuzzier,” Mr Tait replied. “But I can do a proposed bonding schedule that is ten years. When you do ten years, a 20-, 30-year [long-term strategic] plan really helps a ten-year process.”

Councilwoman Po Murray then asked Mr Tait about the best timeframe for generating fiscal impact statements, which she pointed out was designated in the charter. Mr Tait said a mini-impact statement would be included as part of the boilerplate on the CIP request documentation. But any in-depth fiscal analysis would be best served in closest proximity to the actual bonding request.

Mr Rodgers then referred to the charter, bringing a chorus of laughter and finger pointing when he read that the council was responsible for designing the form required for fiscal impact statements.

“We’ll let you do it,” Ms Murray said to Mr Tait.

“I’ve been looking for [examples of] a policy statement,” Mr Tait said. “I guess I’ll be designing one because I can’t find any copies of a fiscal impact statement.”

Clarity Over Time

Mr Rodgers said that while department heads are bound to submit the in-depth statement upon their funding requests, there is nothing wrong with including annual updates each year as the respective CIP requests tick down to the year of anticipated funding.

Council member Joe Hemingway, who is also a Democratic candidate for Board of Selectman, said based on his experience, long-term project cost estimates will become progressively more focused as they resurface each year in the CIP deliberation process.

Mr Davis also wondered why, based on the fact that the Board of Finance is an advisory body, that the CIP does not come before the council first, to receive prioritization and input before being presented to finance officials.

“Really, at this point, the way the Board of Finance has been functioning is they look at the top priority for the town and the top priority for the Board of Ed,” Mr Davis said. “They assume those are the top priorities.”

But, Mr Davis believes the council is in a much better position to determine what the top CIP priorities should be, and then give direction to the finance board so “they can process [whether or not[ we can afford these priorities.”

“I think we could give some additional direction which would help to modulate possibly the amount of money we might consider bonding in a given year,” Mr Davis continued. “And we could help give more direction about the priorities between the two sets of documents from the two different groups.”

Mr Rodgers clarified that if Mr Davis’s suggestion was being considered, that the council would also retain its position as providing the final vote on annual CIP requests. Mr Rodgers then said Mr Davis’s ideas should be part of a future discussion once the issue of modifying the CIP process comes back before the panel as old business in subsequent meetings.

Mr Rodgers said there should be further input from Mr Tait, as well as finance board Chair John Kortze, before the council begins considering substantive changes in the way the CIP process has been handled in the past.

Contacted following the meeting, Mr Kortze said if the CIP process is stretched, it should not be regarded as a strategic plan.

“You have to remember the CIP is a spending plan,” Mr Kortze said. “The strategic plan should feed the CIP. In concept this is a good idea, but it’s difficult from a practical sense. You cannot plan if you have arbitrary numbers.”

Mr Kortze said the finance board would welcome a longer term perspective in the form of a strategic plan.

“This was one of my primary recommendations to the Board of Education’s CIP Committee,” Mr Kortze said. “Once you have a better vetting process, you can make a better argument for a long-term strategic plan.”

Mr Kortze added that the Board of Finance does not purport to know the best way to run a town, saying that the recommendations should be top-down, being initiated by the Boards of Selectmen or Education.

“Remember, the Board of Finance or the council has not changed the cost projections or priorities of the CIPs as recommended in recent years, except to push a few projects out last year,” Mr Kortze said. “The spirit of the CIP is a democratic process in which the selectmen and the Board of Ed make CIP priority determinations, because they know best how to run a town and a school system.

“You have to empower the appropriate officials to do their job,” Mr Kortze said.