Shutesbury Finance Committee
Minutes from 3/18/2003 meeting at Town Hall
APPROVED MINUTES
Present: Chair Eric Stocker, members Al Beswick, Nancy Beswick, Narda Wakoluk, Rita Farrell, and Steve Hasbrouck (recording minutes). David Ames was also present.
We started the meeting at 7:15 PM.
Minutes from the Feb. 4th and March 4th meetings were unanimously approved with no changes.
The negotiations with the Police Chief for his new contract are ongoing. No one showed up at the last meeting scheduled with the police union due to snow. The negotiations with the teachers are also ongoing. There is a sentiment that everyone is waiting for the others to go first. The Finance Committee has made it known that we recommend no raises for FY 04. At the Regional level, the teachers are suppose to get a 7% raise, a balloon payment as it were from the last negotiations where they deferred some raises until the last year. That balloon payment may possibly be negotiated down some. Depending upon that result, negotiations with our teachers and police may proceed forward. There is an April 15th meeting between the regional teachers and the region.
The governor’s new formula has changed, drastically in some cases, each town’s assessment in the regional school. Our amount went up 19%. Pelham and Leverett are looking at increases of over 40% each. From some sources we are told the governor’s budget won’t go through at all. The House and Senate will draw up their own budget in May and present it to the governor. There is a belief that the House and Senate won’t have the necessary votes to override any of the governor’s vetoes. So, we are left to our devices figuring out what the parameters are for setting up our budget.
With that we launched into a long discussion about the budget. David Ames had presented six different possible proposals for the budget varying the factors of use of free cash, a proposed override, and whether pay raises are given or withheld. This exercise showed that the more money we spent out of free cash, the greater the deficit to make up in FY 05. Trying to strike a working balance between when to ask for an override versus using free cash is obviously one of our main concerns. Although we did not decide this, the town may end up rejecting the Regional budget. Pelham seems to be leaning that way. The Region would then have to go back and rework that budget. We didn’t make any decisions and moved on to other matters.
We agreed to remove $5,000 in wages from the police’s proposed budget. This money would provide coverage for when our officers go on vacation. It was voted out of last year’s budget and we didn’t want to increase coverage during this time of tremendous budget constraints. We decided we needed to go over each line of the budget together but this meeting wasn’t the time to do it. We then looked at future meetings. On March 25th we will be meeting with the Select Board at 8:00 PM. On April 1st we will go over each line of the budget together. On April 8th we will meet separately with Tim Hunting from the Highway Department, Police Chief Charlie Bray, and the School Committee. On April 15th we will finalize our budget.
With a possible override coming on, the question of abatements for those that need them came up. There are recourses available for those taxpayers who feel they cannot afford increased taxes.
The $1,000 we approved to shore up the braces in the elementary school was more money than they needed. They spent only $495 so we got back $505 into our Fin. Comm. Reserve.
The meeting was adjourned at 9:15 PM.
Respectfully submitted,
Steve Hasbrouck