North Adams Begins $36.6M Budget Review
 Finance Committee Chairman Alan Marden takes a question at Monday's Finance Committee meeting. |
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The Finance Committee began its review of the city's fiscal 2014 budget on Monday night, reviewing line items in the Department of Public Services and City Hall.
The preliminary budget presented at last week's City Council meeting is $36,612,003, up about $333,000 over this year.
"This budget is increased by less than one percent, actually .92," Mayor Richard Alcombright told Finance Committee members Chairman Alan Marden, Lisa Blackmer and David Bond. "And we hope to have that at or below .75."
The mayor said the budget includes a reduction in payroll of 5 1/2 positions, reductions in capital spending, decreases in health insurance and departmental consolidation for better efficiencies. It does, however, include increases in pensions, veterans benefits, public safety and the Hoosac Water Quality District, and overruns in police and fire salaries.
Also in attendance were Councilors John Barrett III, Jennifer Breen, President Michael Bloom, Nancy Bullett and Marie Harpin. Marden accepted questions from other councilors and the audience, within reason
"This is intended to have some input but not go crazy," he cautioned the few residents at hand.
The meeting went fairly smoothly as most line items reviewed Monday had little or no change from this year.
Public Services Superintendent Timothy Lescarbeau said savings of $28,000 were achieved by not replacing an individual who has shifted to the water department. The department is also not replacing a retiree in the cemetery department and has eliminated a half-time custodial position in City Hall that will now be combined into an existing full-time post.
Bullett questioned the city's ability to maintain the parks and recreation infrastructure with fewer workers.
"They're important to our community and not to have a sufficient amount of people to maintain them ... We've built them up but the staffing appears to go down," she said. "I don't have suggestions but I want to raise that as a concern."
Alcombright and Lescarbeau pointed some $77,000 in the seasonal worker budget to aid with summer maintenance. Alcombright, however, continued that is harder for employees to keep up.
Marden asked if a closure of any of the fields or facilities were possible. The mayor said no, but added "it's just an issue to find the time and reources to be able to do those things ... We have to be mindful of the numbers."
The committee also touched on the need for capital improvements, with Lescarbeau warning that the computer system at the water filtration plant was 20 years old and obsolete. "We're keeping it going the best we can," he said, estimating it will cost on the high side of $100,000 to $250,000 to replace.
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Marden also asked about the city's inability to set aside reserve funds, as brought up in the recent audit by Scanlon & Associates. "Scanlon vividly pointed out we needed to start building reserves," he said.
Alcombright agreed but said it had been done in stops and starts.
"Many communities will budget but we don't have the latitude to do that," he said, pointing to the city's structural deficit, which this year is $453,128, down from more than $1 million . The mayor said the city recently took in $158,000 in tax titles and hopes to pick another 10 or 12 percent in the next mailing that could be put toward reserve.
Veterans benefits are running more than $560,000 this year; the state does not reimburse those costs for up to year, which created a hardship for a number of smaller towns and cities in the last few years.
Blackmer, who represents North Adams and other Western Mass members on the Massachusetts Municipal Association, said the MMA had been advocating direct — and more timely — repayments.
"We're hoping since it's a non-electon year we might get something done," she said. "I ask every month when I go down but there's not going to a big focus until the budget is passed."
The councilor's twice-monthly trips to Boston for MMA meetings also brought the councilors' monthly expense stipend of $40 and training reimbursements into focus.
Barrett, seconded by Marden and Blackmer, thought the reimbursements for councilors attending conventions should not be placed in the general administrative "training" line item but rather in the council budget to better understand the costs.
Bullett thought the $40 stipend shouldn't be automatic. "If you don't submit an expense report, you don't get $40," she said. Breen went further, saying perhaps councilors shouldn't be reimbursed at all. Barrett said the intent for the stipend and reimbursement was that it shouldn't cost someone to hold office.
Alcombright asked the councilors to email him with some ideas of how they would like handle the issues.
The mayor had begun the meeting with what he called his "digression," going over budget process and defending how the city's finances have been handled in response to comments made by Barrett at previous meetings and past practices.
"For me, this is administrative policy we all know differs with that of the past administration," Alcombright said. "This process has created the most transparent and inclusive budget and financial discussions that I certainly remember since I began looking at city budgets in 2000. ...
"What I am trying to get at here is that at each Council meeting, Councilor Barrett uses the floor as a bully pulpit to bring up financial issues that apparently never happened in his administration."
Barrett has in the past taken issue with the term "draft" in the mayor's spending proposal and how it's reviewed by the Finance Committee. There has also been debate between the current and past mayor in the condition of the city's finances, with Alcombright pointing to use of reserves to plug recurring debt in the past and Barrett's claiming that it was salary increases that caused the ongoing deficit.
"I'm not interrogating you, I'm questioning things that I see done," said Barrett. "I was elected to do that in my role and that's all that I'm doing. I said I would go along with the process.
"I think we should leave it once and for all ... If not, I'll debate you mayor any time."
Tags: city budget, fiscal 2014,
