Selectmen Hope To Whittle Budget To A Modest Increase

By John Voket

Despite what First Selectman Herb Rosenthal called extremely tight budgeting on the part of municipal department heads, with virtually no fat or extravagancies, he will have to find nearly three-quarters of a million dollars more to cut.

He told The Bee this week the Board of Selectmen’s goal is to bring the town’s municipal side spending in with an appropriate cap reflecting a “modest” increase.

“It’s at a little over six percent right now and our goal is to keep it at or around three percent,” Mr Rosenthal said last Friday. The first selectman’s comments came after he and fellow selectmen William Brimmer, Jr, and Joseph Bojnowski sat through nearly ten hours deliberating over three nights with more than a dozen department heads, commissioners, and agency representatives defending their respective allocation requests.

The effort would represent more than double the challenge selectmen faced at this time last year when they crafted a final municipal-side budget of $30,979,669 from $33.1 million in proposals. As the selectmen adjourned last Thursday, they managed to trim $37.8 million in agency/department requests down to $35,779,367.

Next Tuesday, at 5:30 pm, the Board of Selectmen plan to finish the job, making whatever cuts they feel may be necessary to achieve about a three percent overall increase. But where are they going to find another $600,000 or more in a “no fat” budget that has already seen more than $2 million in trimming so far?

“We’re going to look really hard at our nonrecurring expanses, the highway department, Parks and Recreation, the fire departments, police department and the [Edmond Town Hall] Board of Managers areas,” Mr Rosenthal said. The first selectman said next Tuesday’s meeting is the deadline to complete a municipal budget before it goes to town Finance Director Ben Spragg.

While selectmen originally hoped to finalize the municipal budget request last Thursday evening, the difficult process of deciding on remaining cuts to achieve the cap will require more time. Once the selectmen vote on a final number, Mr Spagg will concurrently produce a municipal budget proposal as well as options to finance the expenditures for presentation to the Board of Finance February 13.

Among some of the more critical and decidedly lower profile expenditures are software packages and some computer hardware to bring the town assessor’s office and tax collector out of the technological dark ages. Those offices are still currently running on DOS (Disc Operating Systems), and although Assessor Tom DeNoto referred to the relatively out of date computers as “efficient,” he acknowledged that he can no longer achieve compatibility with Windows platform software or servers.

“We’re one of two remaining municipalities in Connecticut running these DOS programs,” Mr DeNoto told selectmen during his department’s budget presentation.

However, Mr Rosenthal pointed out that the approximately $69,000 needed to update the assessor’s and tax collector’s operating software and hardware is part of the selectmen’s nonrecurring expenses.

“Basically, all salaries [in those departments] are up two percent overall,” Mr Rosenthal said. “The tax collector’s budget is actually down $1,000 lower than the actual expenditures in 2004-2005.”

He said the assessor’s budget is only up three percent overall because of a $6,000 expenditure for field services. Those services are required as part of the assessor’s ramping up to revaluation, which is scheduled to occur next year.

Tax audits produced by the tax collector’s office will also account for substantially more in increased income than the town will pay to audit the accounts, Mr Spragg added.

Mr Rosenthal indicated that one of the areas the Board of Selectmen may achieve some of the savings will be in the police budget, specifically in the proposal for six new patrol cars. The Bee reported last week that the department’s unprecedented request for six Ford Crown Victorias in the current budget cycle coincided with six units that were nearing or over the generally accepted mileage for municipal departments.

While the first round of cuts to the Board of Manager’s budget all but doomed trustees’ plans to rehabilitate the kitchen and Alexandria Room with municipal funds this coming year, the selectmen pledged to research the possibility of accessing some state grants for the project.

Mr Rosenthal took a moment to remind trustees Sandra Motyka and Jane Sharpe that the town likely lost up to an additional $1 million in Community Development grants this year because the protracted elevator installation and handicapped access renovations created the need for two extensions on an existing $500,000 state block grant.

“If the state didn’t require me to have my name on the sign [describing the state funded renovations], I would have taken some paint and marked it off,” Mr Rosenthal said, expressing his continued frustration with delays on the initiative.

During deliberations last week, the selectmen also considered and approved a part-time position in the animal control office. That position, which would primarily operate during weekend day shifts, would alleviate much higher paid members of the police department from handling weekend animal control calls.

He also told fellow selectmen that increases granted to personnel in the first selectman’s office were justified.

“These people have gone several years without so much as requesting an increase,” Mr Rosenthal said. “And they are doing the same job as administrative assistants in the school superintendent’s office.”

Mr Rosenthal said he felt his two administrative assistants were being underpaid, and determined that from canvassing other similarly sized communities, as well as making dollar for dollar comparisons to Newtown’s own Board of Education office personnel.

The newly expanded health district requested and received an endorsement for a budget nearly $3,000 less than the current year even though the district will be adding a full-time staff member and will be accommodating the needs of both Bridgewater and Roxbury.

District Director Donna Culbert explained that the agreement to fold two smaller part-time health districts into Newtown’s would mean slightly elevated state reimbursements per person for each resident in the new service area.

“Our costs are up, but the revenue to support those increased costs is there,” Ms Culbert pointed out.

Despite a $22,000 drop in allocations from the regional United Way, Newtown Youth Services Chairman Christopher Gardener told selectmen his agency was against asking Newtown taxpayers to make up the difference.

The agency received $160,000 from the town last year, because it is the official youth services agency of the municipality, despite retaining its independent nonprofit status. Mr Gardener explained that if the Youth Services organization were to become a municipal department, he believed its operating budget would inflate substantially.

While he pointed out a rapidly increasing demand for services, up more than 100 percent this year, Mr Gardener said the agency was looking at a combination of annual appeals, a Mini Cooper car raffle, and a first-time road race to help raise the necessary operating revenue to keep the organization in the black.

The Board of Selectmen plan to make final adjustments to the municipal side of the 2006-2007 budget Tuesday, February 7, at 5:30 pm, in the meeting room of the library.