Gobble-gobble, y'all

Tomorrow's Herald will include an update on the downtown parking proposal. A story on the first budget meeting of this cycle is waiting in the wings and should see publication in the next couple days.

Happy Thanksgiving everybody. Drive safe and see you on Friday.

Overheard at City Hall

"There's no question that isn't stupid when it comes to the budget."

I'm 99 percent sure that came out the opposite of how it was intended, but I can't be certain. If so, I acually think it's better like this.

So what about the pipes?

The folks I've spoken to who voted against the Giorgetti bond fall into two categories.

One group seemed convinced that high taxes would put their grandmothers out on the street if the bond passed. These are the people we can likely count on to vote against anything.

The other expressed a sentiment that the city should not be mucking about with a rec center while struggling with such an ancient water and sewer infrastructure. These people, as near as I can tell, made up the larger block of the no votes.

I asked Mayor Louras today if this meant it was time to put a bond issue on the next available ballot, say $2 million to replace the oldest pipes as the aldermen continue the multi-year process of drafting a capital replacement plan.

Louras leaned forward in his chair, smiled and said "Why does it need to go on the ballot?"

The full story will be in, you guessed it, tomorrow's Herald.

In Sync

The Community and Economic Develoment Committee meeting started late tonight as Sharon Davis had to wait for a quorum to arrive.

As they waited, Ed Larson declared that he would vote to restore the contingency fund when the budget makes it to the full board. Davis and David Allaire replied "Absolutely" in what sounded like perfect unison.

Notte hopes he isn't the lone holdout

Alderman William Notte was on the losing end of several 4-1 votes during the General Committee meeting Thursday, among them the vote to cut the contingency fund.

"I can understand my fellow aldermen on the committee wanting to reduce the budget wherever possible," he said Monday. "Some cuts are simply not acceptable from the standpoint of being a responsible official ... For us to slash our contingency fund by $100,000 - that's not belt-tightening. That's gambling."

Notte also rejected Alderman David Dress's reasoning that the city could lay someone off in order to make budget if faced with emergencies costing more than $100,000.

"Let's say we're at the end of the fiscal year and we have something equivalent to the norricane," he said. "You're not going to see the financial benefits right away from that action."

Notte said some of his fellow aldermen entered the process thinking they had to cut the budget no matter how low it was to begin with, and that he hopes to see a "full debate" when the budget goes before the full board.

Outside the Box

Two novel ideas for dealing with the budget were promptly shot down by the rest of the room at the General Committee meeting Thursday.

The election section drops markedly after every general election because, in odd years, the town only has to pay for polling on Town Meeting Day, wherease in even years the primary and the general add to the tally.

Seeing the cliff-like drop, Committee Chairman Christopher Robinson suggested amortizing general election expenses over the off years to make for a more stable budget line.

Mayor Louras said that would require setting up an enterprise fund to keep the leftover money from the off years from returning to the general fund. William Notte said it was probably easier to just "have the clerk do the math every year." The idea was dropped.

David Dress wants to stop giving away copies of the city report and start charging for them.

Louras said that would create a problem with the charter, for starters, and with city residents.

"Last year when we ran out there were some irate people, individuals who came back from wintering in Florida and said 'Where's the town report?'" he said.

Several Aldermen in the room quickly declared they wanted no part in such a change.

The Inadequacy of Government by Proverb

There's a meme I've heard in just about every budget process I've covered since I've been a reporter. Or, at least, whenever the economy's been rough, which seems like it started right after I became a reporter and never really let up.

It goes like this: When times are tough for your family, you "tighten your belt." Therefore, in a troubled economy, government needs to cut everything it can. I heard it in just those words back during the argument over the water and sewer rates, and I heard it alluded to again tonight in the argument over the contingency fund.

Like with so many other pieces of "common wisdom," that's not quite how real life works. For a lot of families, not having enough money means somebody is working extra shifts, or a second job, or someone who has been staying home is going back to work.

I'm a city taxpayer. I'd like to see the budget go down, too, but I worry about what we'll lose if that turns into a blind imperative to cut, cut, cut. I'd rather see discussions on the merits of each expenditure. 

The budget did what?

A few years back, someone at a budget meeting I was covering (these things bleed together in the memory after a while, so I don’t remember who or where) said that as a rule, you could expect municipal budgets to go up between three and five percent every year.

Sometimes it would be a little more, he said, and sometimes it would be a little less, but plan on that sort of annual increase and you’ll usually be in the ballpark and it will always even out over a few years.

That roughly matches what I’ve seen in several towns during the last decade, so I was expecting something in that range when I walked into Mayor Louras’s office Monday and asked him how much the city budget was going up.

He was nice enough to show me the numbers before he started in with the mockery.

It's budget time

This morning Mayor Louras came into the Herald for to share and explain with Editor Randal Smathers, Managing Editor Alan Keays and myself his fiscal year 2011 general fund budget proposal. That interview (just shy of an hour) was taped and will soon be broadcast on PEG TV, so watch out for it in the coming days.

Later in the day, we also received a copy of the document I'm attaching below. It is a letter to the Board of Aldermen that touches on the major points to be made about this budget and it's accompanied by a one-page spreadsheet comparing department costs for FY'10, proposed FY'11 and percent increase/decrease. At the bottom of that page you'll also see the mayor's "initiatives" - which are the major expenditures, above hard costs, that he felt were important to get into this budget.

Also important to note is that this budget doesn't include COLAs for any non-union employees or employees subject to union contracts. He does, however, ask that the health care contributions for the same employees be kept untouched.  

(This file is a PDF. To download it or open it in a new browser window, all you should have to do is click the link.)

Download: Mayors_budget_info

 

Happening this week

I've been sick and out of commission (no it was not swine flu) for the past week, but I'm feeling fine and will be back in the normal swing of things beginning tomorrow.

Just in time for the throes of budget season. In addition to the usual, biweekly Board of Aldermen meeting tomorrow night, here's what's coming up.

Tuesday - General Committee, 5:30 p.m. - This committee will look at many of the odds and ends portions of the budget, which I believe include community development (the Rutland Redevelopment Authority), legislative (the aldermen), executive, attorney, assessor, clerk, building and zoning and government building.

Wednesday - Public Works Committee, 5:30 p.m. - As the name suggests, this meeting will be devoted to the proposed $3.4 million budget for the Department of Public Works.

Thursday - Finance Committee, 5:30 p.m. - Here Alderman Dave Dress will lead the discussion of Treasurer Wendy Wilton's $598,000 budget. Given recent tension, typically reserved to Dress' questioning of Wilton's practices but which has recently spread to other members of the board, a conversation strained by nature could have an extra level of terseness.

Given the late meetings and the wealth of information I'll be listening to (and unable to include in the paper) look for additional details here this week.