North Adams 2014 Budget Referred to Committee
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NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The City Council on Tuesday night referred the proposed $36.5 million budget for fiscal 2014 and the compensation and classification plan for fiscal 2014 to the Finance Committee.
The budget reflects an increase of .59 percent over this year's budget, and a reduction in staff of six full-time positions and one part time.
"The approach this year is once again as close to zero-based budgeting as it can be whereby we first established anticipated revenues and then challenged departments to come in with budgets that accurately reflect expenditures," read Mayor Richard Alcombright from a letter that accompanied the budget.
Alcombright told the council that the budget was based on forecasted revenues and department heads were challenged to "accurately reflect expenditures."
The Finance Committee has already been reviewing the departmental budgets and will be look at the school budgets on Thursday, June 13, at 5:30 p.m.
Councilor Alan Marden, chairman of the Finance Committee, said the committee will do a final line-by-line review on Tuesday, June 18, and take a vote on recommendations.
The cuts in positions are commissioner of public safety, a Department of Public Works employee, a police officer, the assistant health inspector, a clerical position in the treasurer's office, a library worker and a part-time clerk in the assessor's office.
The mayor planned to schedule meetings to review capital needs, including equipment, the public safety building and the drainage problems that continue to plague the city in the wake of Tropical Storm Irene.
A current structural deficit of $335,000 will be made up of from whatever is left over in free cash and available reserves from the first half of the year prior to setting the tax rate.
The council referred the budget after nearly an our of discussion, much of it between the mayor and Councilor John Barrett III over past budgets, tax rates and the use of reserves.
Barrett objected to the term "structural deficit" and said the compensation and classification plan was not being followed properly according to steps, pointing to several increases for positions.
Alcombright said some city positions had incurred greater responsibilities as other posts had been eliminated and departments consolidated but the net savings in salaries was in the tens of thousands of dollars.
Councilor Nancy Bullett said there was difference of opinion and she thought it would be better to "see any savings laid out."
"The past is the past the present is the present," she said. "Let's turn to the future."
In other business, the council set a public hearing for its next meeting on a request for joint pole locations on Hawthorne Avenue and Blackinton Street by National Grid and Verizon.
Robert Cardimino was escorted out of the council chambers prior to the meeting for refusing to take off a T-shirt calling Councilor Jennifer Breen a racist.
Tags: city budget, fiscal 2014,
