Politics & Government

Budget Process Is Well Underway

Jaskiewicz Expects to Get Budget to Council by Mid-April

As 2011 unfolds, the town’s departments and nonprofit groups have submitted their budget proposals to Mayor Joe Jaskiewicz. The school budget process also is underway.

The process, says Finance Director Terry Hart, begins in November.

It involves three major elements: what the departments have spent, their current budget, and their requests for the coming fiscal year.

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In the past, the mayor, working with the finance director, gave the departments spending-increase guidelines. This year, he did not.

The current year’s town budget is three-quarters of 1 percent smaller than the previous year’s budget. The school portion of the current budget was 1 percent over the previous year’s.

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Of the current $55 million budget, the school portion is $35 million, and the town portion $20 million.

This year, Jaskiewicz said, given the difficult economy, “we wanted to take a hard look at the budgets.”

“They all know what we want from them,” he said.

The state's presence

The taut local economy is potentially stretched even thinner by the state’s precarious situation.

In the current fiscal year, Montville received $17 million from the state. Of this, $13.7 million was grants for the schools, and $3.7 million was for the town.

There is no word yet on what the state will be willing to give to the town.

“We took a big hit in 2008-2009,” Jaskiewicz said. “Everyone did. And they (the state) are not obligated to fund at 100 percent.”

The departments submit their proposed budgets to the mayor by the end of January.

He and Hart study the proposals, and then the mayor gets together with department heads, goes over their proposals, asks questions and makes changes. He does the same with the Board of Education’s budget. The document that comes out of these discussions, and is finalized with the finance director, becomes the mayor’s recommended budget.

He is required to get the budget to the Town Council 75 days before the end of the fiscal year, or around April 15.

Public hearings

The council has two public hearings on the mayor’s proposed budget, one for the school side, and one for the town side.

The public hearings must occur no less than 60 days from the end of the fiscal year. At the hearings, the public will be invited to speak about the budget. After the public hearings, the council accepts or rejects the budget.

Hart and Jaskiewicz said they have not seen any extraordinary proposals this year. Much of the content of the budgets is contractual, meaning it is wages and benefits agreed to by the bargaining unit, the union to which most of the town’s employees belong.

Most of what’s come in so far, Jaskiewicz and Hart said, is budget proposals requesting zero percent to 1 percent increases.

On the capital side - the portion of the budget that goes to buy equipment, supplies and the like - there is a request for $395,000 to go towards a fire truck for Oakdale. The fire department has some funds set aside, Hart said. Usually, they get $200,000 a year to put toward fire trucks, but last year, they didn't get any money for a new truck.

Situations like this are apt to occur more frequently, Jaskiewicz said. While the austerity under which the town has been operating is laudable, Jaskiewicz said, it also is worrisome.

“I don’t know how it can continue,” he said.

 


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