Apr 3, 2008
Light attendance at hearing on town budget, bonding requests
|
There were a few words of disagreement with the Board of Selectmen’s budget Tuesday night, with two speakers openly questioning the way the town is choosing to spend money in fiscal year 2009.
The board presented its budget, a 4.7% increase from fiscal year 2008, to residents at the meeting. First Selectman William Brennan noted some of the accomplishments of the board over the past year, including:
• Keeping head count frozen
• Coming in $2.7 million under budget
• Continuing improvements in Wilton Center such as the lampposts along River Road
• Instituting the capital process procedure into three major projects, namely the Comstock Community Center project, the high school renovation, and the Miller-Driscoll expansion.
“The Board of Selectmen is pleased with the progress made in Fiscal Year 2008,” said Mr. Brennan.
Delving into next year’s budget, Mr. Brennan said 51% of the budget is composed of the Police Department, Fire Department, and the Department of Public Works. The library makes up 8.7% of the budget, he said.
“That’s up slightly from last year,” said Mr. Brennan of the library’s request.
One part-time worker for the Social Services Department is being added to the head count, Mr. Brennan said.
One driver of the budget is the subsidy to the town’s transfer station. The subsidy is going from $155,000 this year to $300,000 next year because of the town’s contract with Connecticut Resources Recovery Authority, the group that handles the town’s trash. The contract expires this year, and Mr. Brennan said they were collecting more fees.
“They’re basically loading up at the end because they sense a number of communities will be leaving” the contract, said Mr. Brennan. To that end, Mr. Brennan said the town had found a preferred contractor and would be starting negotiations with it.
Mr. Brennan said no decision had been made on the future of the transfer station.
Complaints
Dick Kilbride of Lee Allen Lane said he was unhappy with the fact that with surpluses, the town wasn’t sending money back to residents.
“We’re not seeing that applied to our taxes,” said Mr. Kilbride.
Members of the Board of Finance disagreed with that assessment.
“We applied the excess of the ’05 to the ’06. We applied the excess of the ’06 to the ’07,” said financier Warren Serenbetz.
Bob Kelso, chairman of the Board of Finance, said part of the reason for the surpluses was an uncertainty with how much money would be collected.
Mr. Kilbride asked why the town didn’t reduce spending in order to make the tax rate lower.
“I personally think the Board of Education and the Board of Selectmen have done a fine job of keeping expenses to a minimum,” said Mr. Kelso.
Milton Pohl of Hurlbutt Street said the public-private partnerships were asking for too much money, pointing to what similar partnerships in other towns spend.
Wiltonians support the library to the tune of $123.61 per person, Mr. Pohl said, while in New Canaan $78.76 is paid per person for the library and $34.42 per person is paid for the library in Weston.
“As far as I’m concerned, the New Canaan library serves my needs very, very well,” said Mr. Pohl.
He also pointed to the teen center in Darien drawing 29,450 in tax dollars, while the teen center here in Wilton draws $134,268.
“I don’t understand why we should have these differences in public-private partnerships,” said Mr. Pohl. He also said the Comstock project will affect the budget down the road and that should also be mentioned.
Louise Herot, president of the Wilton Library, said the library has done a good job of limiting its increases given the larger space it now occupies. She said the increase in staff since the expansion has been 30% despite the space doubling.
She also said the number of full-time employees at the library was similar to that of New Canaan and Ridgefield.
“We’re now open 59 hours per week. That’s still less than the surrounding towns,” said Ms. Herot. “In hard times there’s even more need for a working public library.”
Robert Fitzpatrick of Westport Road congratulated the Board of Finance on reducing its General Accounting Standards Board liability by creating a fund for other post-employee benefits.
“You’re pretty much the only town that has it in the state,” said Mr. Fitzpatrick of the new fund.
Bonded capital
The Board of Education presented its two bonded capital requests, one for $450,000 for design work for the high school renovation project and one for $500,000 for a new roof for the field house at the high school.
“We’re finding that this is a project with many variables,” said Karen Birck, chairman of the Board of Education of the high school project. She noted the $24-million price tag is only an estimate, and the $450,000 request would pay for an architect to draw up plans. A request to pay for the building project would be brought to a special town meeting in the fall, she said.
Gil Bray, vice chairman of the Board of Education, described the field house roof as a “32,000-square-foot pepperoni pizza.”
Showing pictures of the roof, he said “it’s definitely time to have a new roof.” The roof was first installed in 1987. If the proposal for the roof passes at the Annual Town Meeting, he said construction could begin at the end of school and work could be finished by the Fourth of July.
© Copyright 2008 by Hersam Acorn Newspapers
|
