Brayshaw submits ‘creative and compassionate’ budget to Middlefield Board of Finance
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Thursday, March 5, 2009 - 10:53am
Middlefield First Selectman Jon Brayshaw and finance director Joe Geruch wrestled long and hard with a proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year – July 1, 2009-June 30, 2010. They managed to hold costs down to a 0.6 percent increase, for a municipal budget proposal of $3,443,688, up from the current year’s $3,327,862. This would require no new taxes and would also not cut services.
That is, until last Friday when Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell announced the cancellation of the bond payment for the already-constructed Mattabeseck Bridge. The bond money had been approved in July, 2005, and the bridge was repaired and paid for in expectation of receiving the state grant. Geruch has carried that amount in each subsequent budget, hoping that one of these years it would actually come through.
Brayshaw’s and Geruch’s efforts to craft the most frugal budget possible, however, relied in part on finally actually getting that promised money. Cushioning the blow a bit, answered pleas to departments to hold expenses this year as the financial crisis became ever more extreme, means the town could end the year with an approximate surplus of $200,000. “The plan was to put half of that into our Reserve Fund and half into the budget as revenue to offset the need to raise taxes,” explained Geruch. “If we use the whole $200,000 (including the $100,000 planned for the Reserve Fund) to offset expenses in next year’s budget, we still need to find $150,000 in cuts or extra revenue to add up to the $250,000 the Governor isn’t sending us and to avoid a tax increase. That will be difficult now.”
This knocks a considerable hole – a seven percent hole, in fact – in Brayshaw’s and Geruch’s plan for dealing with tough times.
Brayshaw explained it this way: “We had a choice; we could do the political thing and gut town services and lay people off or cut hours wholesale, but we think we have been frugal for years and we have a good team. So we decided to ask our highly skilled staff to multi-task to provide the services the townspeople need and want at current costs and also provide job stability for town workers.”
So Brayshaw’s budget has some surprising new zeros in it. There is, for example, a zero for the tax collector’s assistant. That’s because assessor Steve Hodgetts will fill in as needed. He will also become the town’s webmaster, allowing the town to restart the website they took off the internet last year. This service would cost about $10,000 annually if it could not be done in-house with current employees.
Almost $13,000 for a wetlands enforcement officer has also disappeared because sanitarian Lee Vito will assume that job, as well as acting as the town’s emergency management director. These additional duties may not always be possible, but in times when building activity is low, such as now, Vito and Hodgetts taking on new tasks is not so farfetched. By making Vito the new emergency management/incident management director, the town also stands to have one-half of his salary for the time spent at that job (expected to be about two days a week) reimbursed by the Department of Homeland Security.
However, these multi-tasking changes ultimately depend on union agreement, explained Geruch.
The line item for seasonal labor for public works has also been zeroed out, with two possible scenarios for handling mowing chores around the Community Center, firehouse and Town Hall. “The town crew could do it during down times or we could bid it out,” explained Brayshaw.
Another set of new zeroes has nothing to do with hard economic times, but reflects the fact that the last payment was made this year on the Strickland property. The payment was just over $53,000, but that number and much more will be needed for other property acquisitions approved by townspeople. The last balloon payment of $160,400 for the Hubbard Street commercial property is in the 2009-2010 budget proposal, as is $127,800 interest on the Powder Ridge purchase and $25,000 for a one-year payment on the Merriam Tree Farm property. The latter payment is not certain because a developer with whom Bob Merriam had been talking prior to making arrangements with Middlefield and Middletown has taken Merriam to court to prevent him from selling the farm to the two municipalities. Also, the Powder Ridge payment could be offset if the ski area is sold, which could also add significantly to the tax rolls.
“The expenses related to purchase and development of these properties will help insure our future,” Brayshaw explained. “Surprisingly, sometimes people are shocked that we didn’t get all this land for free, but land costs money and it will cost money to assure that it is developed to protect the town and give us the most payback.”
What happens to Brayshaw’s budget now is that the Board of Finance (BOF) will set a public hearing on the proposal in the next few weeks. Based on what they hear at that meeting, the BOF will either make changes or not. If they make changes, they are required to hold a second public hearing on the amended proposal.
The budget submitted by Brayshaw to the Board of Finance also does not include the education portion of town expenses, by far the single highest number in the budget.
