Budget Changes Establish Better Picture

Of Municipal Department Costs

By John Voket

A number of Board of Selectmen actions approved earlier this month, which were approved by the Board of Finance on August 8, may appear as increases to various municipal department budgets. But the approvals of a half-dozen transfers on August 1 depleted or will eliminate parts of other budget lines in the 2012-13 spending plan, while initiating a new and more transparent way of showing taxpayers and town officials the true cost of those departments, according to First Selectman Pat Llodra.

One of the actions also broke out the municipal Human Resources Department from under the first selectman’s budget and making it an independent entity, while another moved funds formerly used to pay a private security firm through the Fairfield Hills management company to Newtown Police Department, which took over managing campus security July 1.

Yet another action took a host of local and regional human service and nonprofit agencies receiving taxpayer support that were formerly represented in the budget as independent departments, and combined those disbursements in to a single budget department.

The actions that were taken by the selectmen are as follows:

*Create an independent budget line for a Human Resources Department, transferring $57,500 from the first selectman’s budget line.

*Move an additional $23,000 from pension and supplies budgets to the HR department because that department authorizes certain pension payments, and another $18,000 to cover required employee physicals.

*Transfer $85,037 from the Contractual Services account to the Police Department budget to cover the cost of contract security personnel for Fairfield Hills.

*Combine numerous service agency disbursements into a single department called “Outside Agencies,” totaling $117,453.

*Break out funding to cover medical and life insurance costs including Newtown Youth & Family Services and The Children’s Adventure Center, a preschool, both of which are part of the outside agencies department.

*Move $30,000 from a single account into various department budgets to cover long-term disability costs.

*A similar transfer of $45,000 to cover life insurance benefits of various departments.

*Transfer another $817,005 to various departments for annual Social Security expenditures.

*Shift a total of $845,389 to various departments to pay all additional pension disbursements, including $815,615 to the Town and Police Department and $29,774 to various other department budgets.

*Move $2,806,855 to various departments to cover the cost of major medical coverage.

The actions will eliminate the Pension, Employee Benefits, and FICA Departments, effective immediately.

Finance Director Robert Tait explained that the actions will better illustrate the true total costs of operating each municipal department. During the next budget process, Mr Tait said the amounts referenced will be illustrated in total as they appear in the current budget document, and then shown as they have migrated to various department lines.

Mr Tait will also include a medical benefits summary further detailing the destinations of all the specific dollar amounts transferred to the various affected departments.

Selectman Will Rodgers commented that if the new procedures help taxpayers and officials understand the overall costs of departments, “it’s a good thing.”

“We just have to do a good job explaining that this does not mean humongous increases to each department,” Mr Rodgers added.

Mrs Llodra concurred, saying, “We will have to be even more clear about how the money presents itself across the landscape of the budget.”

Mr Tait said it will be easy to see as currently funded departments are reduced — some down to zero — in side-by-side columns in next year’s budget documents.

“The net budget change is zero,” Mr Tait said.

The finance director said the Board of Education is still reporting employee benefits in total, versus breaking them out as the town budget now illustrates.