WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Finance Committee last week dug into the details of the town's proposed fiscal 2018 operations budget, which calls for an aggregate 1.98 percent increase in costs across all non-school departments.
The Police Department, Milne Public Library, Council on Aging, Community Development Office, and Assessor and Finance departments were among those who presented their spending plans to the Fin Comm.
Town Manager Jason Hoch told the committee the town is projecting a 3 percent wage adjustment for its non-union employees in FY18. And the budget's bottom line benefits from a change in the Berkshire Health Group plan that shifts costs away from municipalities and onto public employees through deductibles.
"We did get, one could argue from a budgeting point of view, lucky when we were forced into a health-care change by Berkshire Health," Hoch told the Board of Selectmen last Wednesday. "The bad news is the coverage will make almost every one of our employees worse off. I'm disappointed in that, but this is beyond our control. We voted against this.
"From a budget point of view, it's great, but from a taking care of your people point of view, it's not ideal."
The bottom lines of most of the departments the Fin Comm looked at Wednesday night were relatively in line with the 2 percent hike throughout Town Hall, but there were a few changes within the departments the generated questions and discussions from the committee during the speedy 90-minute meeting.
An example is the Building Assessor's budget, which is up by nearly 14 percent from FY17 because of a software change necessitated by a change in Boston, Principal Assessor Bill Barkin told the Fin Comm.
"The Department of Revenue is abandoning the software we've been on for seven or eight years," Bill Barkin said. "That's left the towns high and dry, and we're scrambling to convert."
The software in question maintains all the pertinent data on every property in town, he said. Currently, Williamstown uses a program developed and owned by the commonwealth, but that system no longer will be an option.
"It has to do with the state's cutback," Barkin said. "They're cutting back in their IT, and they don't want to support it anymore."
The town instead is looking at software from one of the leading private firms in the industry that already has a strong foothold in New England, he said. The initial acquisition cost is being spread over a couple of years with $12,250 budgeted in FY18. Going forward, the licensing fee on the new software will be about 50 percent more than what the town currently pays the state for using similar technology, Barkin and Hoch told the committee.
The $12,250 hit on the FY18 budget in Barkin's department accounts for most of a $7,106 $17,106 total increase from FY17, raising the department's budget to $141,316, from $124,210 in the current fiscal year.
Technology is costing the town a little more in another area of the budget as well.
Town Hall's IT budget is up by a little more than 5 percent in FY18 as the town moves more of its operations onto the cloud. The move allows for smoother operations in the short term and cost savings in the long run, Finance Director Janet Sadler said.
"We continue to make strides forward in trying to go to the cloud, to become more efficient, to move ourselves further away from having to replace servers constantly," she said. "We are making a transition to Google Docs, Google email. It's more efficient in being able to access documents, share things with our coworkers, spam filtering.
"When Bill Barkin goes to his new program, that can go on the server because we now have room because our documents and emails have gone to the cloud. There's a big one-time expense for it, but we feel it's the right way to go."
The data processing line in the IT budget is up by 54 percent (from about $33,000 to about $52,500), and the budget features a new line item, $1,800, to pay for Google licensing fees.
That fee allows the town to use a more secure version of Google's email and document products than is available to consumers, Hoch told the Fin Comm.
In addition to some of the cost increases sprinkled throughout the budgets presented Wednesday, there also were minor cost savings here and there.
For example, both the public library and Harper Center are budgeting lower costs for utilities in 2018 because of efficiencies realized by physical upgrades. The Milne Library's recently replaced furnace means it needs to budget 1 percent less for natural gas in FY18, a savings of $1,462. The Council on Aging's Harper Center is budgeting 29 percent less for electricity and 14 percent less for natural gas (combined savings of $1,500) because of renovations made to the building in recent years, Council on Aging Director Brian O'Grady told the committee.
The Fin Comm was generally pleased with all of the presentations from staff that it heard on Wednesday night.
Committee members asked Hoch followup questions based on an appeal it heard last month from Village Ambulance Service. He told them there is no money currently in the town budget to support the service, and any expenditure that could potentially show up would be in the form of a separate warrant article for May's annual town meeting.
"There is no money proposal at this point," Hoch said. "A group of us representing the town, Village Ambulance, the Fire Department and [Williams College] are having a conversation. If it it gets to the point where there's money, if we reached something before town meeting that required money, it would most likely be a warrant article."
In other business Wednesday, the Fin Comm authorized Chairman Michael Sussman to approach the chairs of the Williamstown Elementary and Mount Greylock School committees about having an April meeting to discuss long-term budgeting issues.
"I'm talking about how over the next three to five years do the schools bring their budgets in line with what the town can support," Sussman said.
The Tri-District central office, which administers both WES and Mount Greylock (and Lanesborough Elementary School) currently is led by an interim superintendent and is in the process of hiring a new business manager.
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Williams Seeking Town Approval for New Indoor Practice Facility
By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Planning Board last week gave Williams College the first approval it needs to build a 55,000-square foot indoor athletic facility on the north side of its campus.
Over the strenuous objection of a Southworth Street resident, the board found that the college's plan for a "multipurpose recreation center" or MRC off Stetson Road has adequate on-site parking to accommodate its use as an indoor practice facility to replace Towne Field House, which has been out of commission since last spring and was demolished this winter.
The college plans a pre-engineered metal that includes a 200-meter track ringing several tennis courts, storage for teams, restrooms, showers and a training room. The athletic surface also would be used as winter practice space for the school's softball and baseball teams, who, like tennis and indoor track, used to use the field house off Latham Street.
Since the planned structure is in the watershed of Eph's Pond, the college will be before the Conservation Commission with the project.
It also will be before the Zoning Board of Appeals, on Thursday, for a Development Plan Review and relief from the town bylaw limiting buildings to 35 feet in height. The new structure is designed to have a maximum height of 53 1/2 feet and an average roof height of 47 feet.
The additional height is needed for two reasons: to meet the NCAA requirement for clearance above center court on a competitive tennis surface (35 feet) and to include, on one side, a climbing wall, an element also lost when Towne Field House was razed.
The Planning Board had a few issues to resolve at its March 12 meeting. The most heavily discussed involved the parking determination for a use not listed in the town's zoning bylaws and a decision on whether access from town roads to the building site in the middle of Williams' campus was "functionally equivalent" to the access that would be required under the town's subdivision rules and regulations.
Zimmermann comes to the Milne Public Library from Wisconsin with over eight years of management experience in library services, most recently as the Executive Director of the Racine Public Library.
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Manary talked to the Fin Comm about the Massachusetts Public Library Construction Program, which, he said, funds anywhere from 50 to 75 percent of construction costs.
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Taylor Garabedian scored a team-high 22 points and grabbed five rebounds, and Abby Scialabba scored 16 points for the ‘Canes, who got 16 points, nine rebounds and four assists from Ashlyn Lesure. click for more
On Saturday afternoon at Lowell’s Tsongas Center, the Hurricanes will take aim at Division 5 State Championships in girls and boys basketball. click for more
There are only two known copies of the flag in existence: one at the State House and one in the meeting room on the first floor at Town Hall.
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