Selectmen Slash Nearly $2 Million, Pass Budget To Finance Board

By John Voket

Seeming to work alternately with an ax and fine-toothed comb, selectmen over the course of three budget workshops and a scheduled meeting, chopped and sifted their way through $1,829,250 in cuts to the municipal budget proposal. On Monday, the Board of Selectmen voted to accept and pass to the Board of Finance a $33,178,956 package that represents a 5.93 percent, or about a 0.6 mill, increase in the tax rate.

One mill represents $1 of each $1,000 in assessed property value, so the selectmen’s proposal would represent $180 increase in property taxes for a home with an assessed value of $300,000.

Town Finance Director Ben Spragg was quick to point out, however, that these figures are extremely preliminary.

“Now we pass it on for two more bites of the apple,” he said Tuesday morning, referring to the next two phases of budget refinements, which can be significantly affected by Board of Finance and Legislative Council reviews in the coming weeks.

The municipal side of the budget does not represent the total impact to taxpayers. The Board of Education’s proposed 7.95 percent increase in expenditures has yet to be finalized and factored in to the overall budget landscape.

First Selectman Herb Rosenthal told fellow selectmen that two-thirds of the overall budget increase represents union negotiated salary increases and stepped-up costs for health insurance benefits for town employees.

“Basically that’s our whole budget increase,” Mr Rosenthal said. “We trimmed more than half the requested increases from town departments. We’d like to do better than that, but you have to play with the hand you’re dealt.”

In relation to health care costs, Mr Rosenthal said adjustments to benefits on the town side of the municipal health coverage closely mirror those enjoyed by school system employees. By making those changes, he said, the town can actually save an additional $69,000.

“We have roughly the same increase as the Board of Education,” he said. “We’re in the same plan, except the town plan doesn’t have quite as many benefits as the Board of Ed.”

Mr Rosenthal said he was hopeful that negotiations for the next health insurance contract would afford some degree of additional savings.

The first selectman noted that health insurance is accounting for two percentage points of the overall 5.93 percent budget increase, or one-third of the proposed municipal budget increase.

With the health plan contract renewal coming up in July, Mr Rosenthal is confident there will be some cost reduction for coverage next year.

“We’re going to be looking actively for a carrier who will reduce our costs in the medical area,” he said. “Just the fact that we’re actively seeking proposals should send a message to our current provider that we’re out there in the marketplace looking to reduce costs.”

While most of the additional budget cuts came during last week’s selectmen’s workshops, Mr Rosenthal said Monday that Police Chief Michael Kehoe worked to achieve an additional $16,000 in cuts himself, after his initial budget was already approved. Those cuts represent a combination of office and field equipment that Chief Kehoe believes he can underwrite through grants, Mr Rosenthal said.

The final area of savings to next year’s bottom line came from Mr Spragg’s office, the first selectman said. Since the final day of the last pay period of this fiscal year actually falls on July 1, the first day of the next fiscal year, the town can shift an entire pay period’s worth of spending and underwrite it from this year’s revenues.

Mr Rosenthal learned late last week, that Newtown will receive almost a half-million dollars in unanticipated conveyance tax income. Instead of being forced to transfer the surplus through to next year’s budget as required by charter, he asked selectmen to support applying it to payroll for the last period of 2004-2005.

“Tonight we need to appropriate from our current revenue, from the increased revenue, and transfer it to various payroll lines,” he said. “This will save us $300,000 against next year’s payroll and social security expenditures.”

The approved 2004-2005 municipal budget came in at $31,320,265. The Board of Finance will begin reviewing the submitted budget Monday, February 14.