Williamstown Budget Takes Aim At Deficit
 Town Manager Peter Fohlin crafted the budget; it has moved to the Finance Committee for review. |
To fulfill the gap, municipal employees will not be given raises for the second time in three years and the town will not hire another Council on Aging outreach worker but may instead have Administrative Assistant Kathy Poirot work part-time in both the Council on Aging and the Municipal building.
"Kathy Poirot happens to have a set of skills that most of us don't have. She's extraordinarily patient, she's very helpful with older people who sometimes can be challenging to deal with and her skills just happen to be perfectly matched to this other situation. So we cut her in half at Town Hall and sent her down to the Council on Aging," Fohlin said. "It's working well at the Council on Aging because of her skill set. It's not working so well up here at Town Hall."
The former Council on Aging outreach coordinator left for another job. The position may not be filled, resulting in $21,106 savings in salary and an additional $10,000 in benefits in the executive budget. Even more savings will be shown in the Council on Aging budget, Fohlin said.
However, there is still time to adjust the budget; the town will monitor how the town operates with Poirot doing both. Fohlin said there has been some trouble with Poirot feeling as if she is not spending enough time in Town Hall and there are times when Fohlin is taken away from his own work to fill in.
"Today she said to me that she's developed a concern that she's starting to get out of the loop on what's going on in the Town Manager and Selectmen's office," Fohlin said. "A lot of stuff happens in the afternoon that when she comes back in the next morning, she's lost. She doesn't know what's happened, she doesn't know what to do."
The town's finance committee began reviewing the budget Tuesday starting with the administration, public works, capital projects and executive department budgets. Fohlin also gave a recap of the town's projected revenue. However, the proposal still needs to be reduced by about $50,000 and appropriations for schools will need to be level-funded to achieve a balanced budget because of an increased contribution to McCann Technical Vocational School.
At this point, revenue is expected to increase by .8 percent. The biggest hold-up is state aid, which is expected to decrease by 7.1 percent.
Another major change is a $110,000 reduction in payments in lieu of tax because Sweetwood/Sweetbrook is no longer making those payments and instead will be on the tax roll. Because the property has not yet been assessed, the town does not have a projection of how much revenue it will generate in taxes. Additionally, the town does not have prior history with the local meals tax, so it cannot project that revenue.
The Department of Public Works will remain relatively the same as last year while the crew focuses on doing more with less. According to Director of Public Works Timothy Kaiser, the only changes in the budget revolve around insurance costs.
"If we're able to finalize it this way, we'll be keeping all of our staff, all of our materials and the equipment and we'll be able to do the same job," Kaiser said. "It's zero this year, it was zero last year and I don't believe there were changes the year before. It gets tighter and tighter and tighter."
To make ends meet the department has been reusing road material for projects, finding bargain equipment – such as two refurbished Army surplus generators Kaiser found recently at a bargain price – and using more sand for the roads, he said.
As for capital projects, Kaiser said the town plans to repair North Hoosac Road at a cost of about $280,000, replace a dump truck at a cost of about $145,000, upgrade the sewer system's main pump station for $45,000, and begin replacing water meters.
