Shutesbury Finance Committee
Minutes from 4/15/2003 meeting at Town Hall
APPROVED MINUTES
Present: Chair Eric Stocker, members Al Beswick, Nancy Beswick, Narda Wakoluk, and Steve Hasbrouck (recording minutes). Guests included Patrick Callahan, Becky Torres, David Ames, Leslie Bracebridge, Walter Tibbetts, and Barbara Goodhind.
We started the meeting at 7:10 PM.
Walter Tibbetts, the fire chief, came back to give us an update on the FEMA grant he submitted. He originally hoped the grant would enable him to buy a vehicle with a strong chassis, switch the current rescue truck onto the strong chassis then use the rescue truck’s chassis for a brush vehicle. Unfortunately, the grant will only pay for him to get the original truck with the strong chassis. It will not cover the costs for making a second vehicle. The town’s cost for its share of the work covered by the grant would be $7,882. To complete the swap, Walter figures it will cost another $10,000. He says the fire association would be willing to kick in some money, maybe as much as $5,000. The town putting up, at most, $17,882 would get about $90,000 worth of work, a better rescue truck, and a brush vehicle. Although for the grant’s purposes he doesn’t need the town’s 10% pre-approved, it wouldn’t hurt to have that. The grant could take until December to arrive, if we get it. It was decided to put the request as a separate warrant asking for the full $17,882. Money would come out of free cash if approved. The Finance Committee gives its support to the warrant. It was mentioned that contacting John Olver to let him know we applied for the FEMA grant wouldn’t be a bad idea. Before Walter left he pointed out that we double stated the money set aside to pay firefighters who respond to calls in the FY ’04 budget. We end up saving another $7,963. We thanked Walter for his efforts and his attentiveness to his budget.
We then launched into discussing the budget. Eric felt there were two main issues to discuss. One would be whether we give the non-stipend town employees a 2% raise in the upcoming budget. This would match the rise in inflation. The other issue to discuss would be how to fund the deficit. Do we fund it all with free cash or do we use free cash along with an override?
As for the 2% raise, it was figured it would cost the town $23,876. This does not include any money the teachers might get. Their budget has a contingency line in it which represents money they are setting aside in case raises are negotiated in their contract. Giving the town employees might help break the log jams in contract negotiations. Other towns have given their employees raises and it seems like the teachers may be getting one. I t would be hard to ask our employees to forego a raise, especially with the money we have set aside in free cash and the stabilization fund.
Our discussion about the 2% raise brought up what we thought the shortfall would be. There are many factors effecting what the shortfall would be. How much state aid are we getting cut? That cut percent has ranged from 15% to 22%. No one knows exactly how much money we will get from the state and the range is quite wide. What is the final Shutesbury Elementary School budget? We have it penciled in for $1,332,266 and their most recent proposal was for $1,384,766. We told them we wanted them to get down to our number but we so far haven’t a number different than the one mentioned above. What is our regional assessment? Our budget has $1,317,783, the original amount given to us by the governor’s budget. Gus Sayer, the superintendent for the regional school, is saying there is a proposal to drop our assessment down to $1,192,117, a dramatic reduction. With so many numbers up in the air, numbers that have a huge impact on the budget, we don’t know what the final short fall will be. We tried to establish a number, an amount of free cash we would use, no matter what size the shortfall. It seems that number is around $150,000. This would leave a reasonable amount of free cash to use should we need it. Any free cash we use to offset the shortfall has a direct impact on FY ‘05’s budget. That money will be needed next year as well. There is talk that the amount of aid given to towns in FY ’05 will take into consideration how much money the town has in free cash and stabilization fund. This is just a possibility at this time.
So, we eventually agreed to give the non-stipend town employees a 2% raise. We decided that we didn’t have enough information to decide whether to use all free cash to offset the shortfall or a combination of free cash and an override. We looked at the time line for decisions from the state government and came up with our own timeline for further meetings and town meeting. The House will release its budget on April 23rd. By May 1st, we figure to have a complete picture of how the House’s budget will play out in local aid, education money, etc. The Senate will release a budget around mid-May but the sentiment is that it won’t be all that drastically different from the House’s budget. We therefore decided to post a Fin. Comm. meeting for Tuesday, April 29th, the same day as the informational meeting on health insurance for town retirees. This will allow us to talk about things. We will have a regular Fin. Comm. meeting on April 30th to finalize our tentative budget to present at the Town Meeting on May 3rd. We will have the regular May 3rd Town Meeting. However, we will not vote on the budget at that time. We will present the final budget at a Special Town Meeting on May 27th, 7:00 PM, at the school. Should we need an override vote, we are tentatively planning that for June 24th. It was decided Eric would draw up a letter to go out with the mailing the town is sending out before the Town Meeting. Eric will circulate the letter to us and submit the final draft to Leslie on Friday, April 18th. We are all going to sign the letter.
We adjourned the meeting at 9:10 PM.
Respectfully submitted,
Steve Hasbrouck