Group Begins Scrutiny of Proposed Budget

Editor's note: an earlier version of this story had an incorrect figure approved for the Women's Center of Southeastern Connecticut).

Starting its task of considering the mayor’s proposed budget, the Finance Committee has approved a few departmental requests, and raised questions about others.

Meeting on Tuesday evening, the committee also recommended raising a number of fees the town charges for services.

Fees

Finance Director Terry Hart brought up the question of fees the town charges for private duty work by police officers.

The union contract, Hart says, is for $42 an hour for the first eight hours, and $63 an hour after that. In addition, there’s a $5 an hour charge for the officer’s car.

• In Groton, the car charge is $10 and hour, and in Waterford, $15.
• In East Lyme, the charge is $69 an hour, including the cost of the vehicle.
• Montville adds roughly 34 percent to the top of the fee to pay for FICA, pension and workers’ compensation costs.

These fees are paid, generally, by companies who need special duty officers to direct traffic for things like bridge construction, parades, Pappy’s Run and the like.

The committee voted to raise the car cost to $15 an hour.

Floating secretary

Moving to the proposed budget, the group discussed the mayor’s request for a floating secretary.

This would be a $25,000 addition to the budget, and is responsible in large part for the increase from the current $167,589 to the requested $193,403 in the mayor’s own department.

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The floating secretary position would be 30 hours with benefits. With the large number of two-person departments in town, Mayor Ron McDaniel said, illness or a vacation can damage a department’s ability to respond to the public. The floating secretary would fill in.

Town Council Chairwoman Candy Buebendorf, who serves on the Finance Committee, questioned the need to hire an additional person, when administrative assistants in departments could be cross-trained to help with coverage.

McDaniel said that the success of that sort of cross-training depends on the unions. He also said that he has asked for the position as “a backup placeholder.”

 “If contract negotiations don’t go as planned, and positions are either cut or diminished,” he said, “we will have coverage.”

The money for the position is not new, McDaniel said, but would come from an administrative position in the public works department that has been funded but not filled.

Administrative assistants

There are four full-time administrative assistants in the town structure, Hart said, and Buebendorf raised the question of whether all the positions should be funded on a full-time basis.

This question was raised a year ago, as well.

Hart said that changes in a number of departments are being implemented to reduce the on-site workload. In the Parks & Recreation Department, for instance, people will be able to pay on line to participate in programs. The tax collector is starting a lockbox for payments, and the town clerk’s office has already implemented an array of on-line services.

“The foot traffic is just not what it used to be,” Hart said.

THE FINANCE COMMITTEE ACCEPTED budgets for:

Town Council - $29,250, as proposed, a 0 percent increase

Legal Services - $340,000, as proposed, a 0 percent increase

Probate - $13,403, as proposed, an 11.69 percent increase, a charge by the state, based on population

Non-profit organizations – amended to $58,000, a 5.6 percent decrease, including:

• $0 for the Eastern Connecticut Conservation District, which got no money this year and requested $1,500;
• $400 for Big Brothers Big Sisters, which got $400 this year and requested $500;
• $0 for Montville Babe Ruth, which requested $0, but got $1,400 in the current year;
• $4,000 for Montville American Little League, which was what it requested, though it got $6,500 this year;
• $1,500 for American Legion Baseball, which is what it received this year, but requested $2,000;
• $300 for the Sexual Assault Crisis Center, down from $350 in the current year;
• $0 for Literacy Volunteers, which got $400 in the current year, but requested $0 for the upcoming fiscal year.
• Buebendorf objected to cutting funding for the Women’s Center of Southeast Connecticut, so that recommendation was raised from $1,500 to $2,000, as it received this year.(Editor's note: an earlier version of this story had an incorrect figure for this group).
• In-kind services dropped from $5,000 in the current year to the requested $0.

Town Hall/Central Service - as proposed, $197,500, a 2.11 percent decrease

Finance Department - as proposed, $608,890, a 12.94 percent decrease

The group plans to look into the possibility of cutting the number of copy machines in Town Hall.