Paris Selectboard meets 3-28-11, 7pm, town office.
ATV use of public roads, lawsuits, candidates for possible selectboard vacancies, cutting spending to lower our taxes, and more. These items are all on the table. But concerned citizens need to understand that there is a more subtle issue at stake, as well.
On January 24, with a vote of 4-1, The Paris Selectboard voted to "set as a goal to flat line the budget for the whole Town and freeze wages for all Town employees". [ in minutes from Paris selectboard meeting 1-24-11 ]
The Committee preparing the budget for Paris' fiscal year 2011-12 has taken this to heart and have been working to ensure that nothing less than this very thing is presented to voters at the June town meeting. Well, no one likes tax bills that keep coming and coming and never get any smaller, do they? Surely we can do with less all around - cut here and slash there - just STOP SPENDING. If we cut spending today there will be nothing coming due tomorrow, right? The piper never demands payment? The clock can be stopped? Don't we wish.
No matter what we want, to ignore looking at what today's shortcuts will bring tomorrow is reckless. If we're going to agree to cut spending, let's do it with eyes wide open, study options, understand consequences. Tightening one's belt doesn't have to be irresponsible.
There are what looks like red flags in the budget being worked on right now. There seems little opportunity - or worse, no one with whom - to have a discussion or debate on issues that are going to affect this town and all of us in it. A committee member herself even asked, when the issue of finding a less expensive health insurance for employees came up, and she was told they had to move on, "When can we talk about this? I don't want this to fall into a hole."
Let's take the Highway Department budget. Roads are a touchy subject around here especially at the end of winter. It takes a huge chunk of money to build and maintain roads. Some hundreds of thousands. So, if one wanted to cut spending this budget would offer an opportunity or 2.
In this year's proposed highway budget, Mgr. Tarr managed to shave roughly 10 thousand dollars from last year's total....but in a budget that's supposed to be flatlined, under "capital improvements," we find a brand new line item this year for $180,000. A new truck. The funds will come from other shaving in other places...but: to paraphrase what one selectman has adamantly verbalized over and over, why would we need to spend this now when things are so tight? Why could it not go into the hole-in-the-dike plugging needs we seem to be surrounded with?
During the 3-17 budget committee meeting, the answer became more and more apparent when Mgr. Tarr was asked firmly to go back and make his budget even flatter. He replied that he didn't want to touch surplus, and he didn't want to reduce capital balance. But he felt that he could certainly make more cuts. And now, the solution he has been hinting at for quite a while has become the fixing thing. He responded to the Budget Committee Chair, "This budget has become bond dependent."
Many towns have bond money at work in their municipality - it is not uncommon. But it is the beginning of something, not an end-all. And the public works program (read that "road building at the local level") he is proposing to use part of the money for needs to be examined very carefully.
When is all that going to come before the public? For questions and discussion, not just a nice friendly and efficient agenda that includes closing up the world when the chairman is done talking.
TPR will follow up on this topic. There are questions about the $180 K truck; about what was cut out of the Highway Dept.'s budget that added up to the $10,000; about this particular road building plan; and about the bond option. Some of this information cannot wait to be talked about in a hearing where there is only rubber stamping involved, or until the town meeting in June. If great and grand plans are about to be set in motion - on our dime - some of us cry Time! We need to talk.
