Board of Selectmen Meeting
January 11th, 2010
By Jay Shenk
This evening’s meeting was cleanly run, and accomplished a lot with a fair amount of discussion but a minimum of raised voices.
First, the Building Commissioner Screening Committee was appointed, and each person volunteering gave a brief account of why they wanted to serve on the committee, and what they brought to the table.
Briefly, here is each person who volunteered, with their qualifications as they described them, in the order they spoke:
• Pete Normandin—lots of experience in building management so he could do a good job picking out candidates, as well as look at the job itself and how it should be structured.
• Steve Hemman—a former Superintendent of Schools at Narragansett, who chaired the search for a new police chief, and is vice chair of the Personnel Board, so knows proper procedures. He wants to insure there is professionalism and consistency in the selection process.
• Andy Sears—is on the Planning Board and is familiar with the process. Since the Planning Board works closely with the building commissioner, he thinks it would be good if someone on the planning board serves on the search committee for the building commissioner.
• Jamie Rheault—has volunteered quite a bit over the past years in Westminster, mainly in youth sports—Babe Ruth Baseball and soccer, and on the school committee, where he has served for 6 years, plus he is on the Superintendent Search Committee. He works for a civil engineering firm, and deals with building inspectors all over the state.
• Bert Gendron—he’s been in town since 1952, and worked for major corporations in VP type jobs….handled codes and construction for large companies such as Atlantic Richfield and Foster Grant. He wants to give a little back to the town. He also thinks we should talk to the building commissioner, to help form the basis of what we’re looking for in the next commissioner.
• Ken Burstall—has been on the Advisory Board for a long time, and knows the internals of the building department. He worked with Bob (Thorell) when he was injured. Ken said he has no conflict of interest, and thinks perhaps we could start getting some economies of scale. He has a long record of bringing in the right people, and thinks we can improve a tremendous amount in our building department (my note: Ken wasn’t implying that the department was poorly run, but rather that we could become more efficient by looking at the big picture).
• Karen Murphy—she succinctly said that since she has day to day supervisory responsibility of department heads, and she should participate in the selection process.
No one objected to anyone who volunteered being on the committee, although Steve Hemman did ask why the Selectmen were limiting the committee to just seven members, as other search committees have had many more and come up with good candidates. A number of others agreed with him, and Nick, speaking for the Selectmen, gave the impression it was something of an arbitrary number designed to be ‘not too many people and an odd number to prevent tie votes’, but since there were only seven people volunteering and the Selectmen had asked for seven volunteers, the entire discussion was academic and eventually dropped. All volunteers were appointed, to come back to the Selectmen with 3-5 satisfactory candidates.
Karen Murphy spoke briefly on tax classifications. My impression was that we are still waiting for something from the state, but in any event she was given the OK to proceed so as to determine the ‘tax factor by type of property’, In the case of residential property the factor is to be ‘1’ , which sounds to me as if no factor will be applied to the value of residential property—if your property is assessed at $100,000, you’ll be taxed on $100,000.
Next up were the presentations of the budgets by the Library Board of Trustees and the Police Department, two of the big four department from a budget viewpoint, the others being the Fire Department and the DPW (Department of Public Works). All town departments have been asked to cut 2% from their actual full year 2009-2010 budgets.
Walt Haney went first, addressing the Library budget, and began by thanking all the library personnel who had volunteered to take unpaid time off, reducing their paychecks, to reach the 2% reduction goal. That thanks was echoed by the Board of Selectmen.
This led into a discussion of the overdue library book fines, and the accompanying bad press, as Westminster made the news state wide for using the police to ‘collect overdue library book fines’. Walt Haney pointed out that had everyone paid for the amount due in overdue fines or for missing books, the library personnel would not have had to take the unpaid days off to balance the budget. John Fairbanks asked if all the money owed were collected, is it possible that the library employees would not have to take their unpaid days off?
That outcome is unlikely, in my opinion, as the library, previous to this January, only charged late fees for DVDs, so in reality most of the money due is for the value of the books or DVDs themselves rather than for fines, meaning most of the amount due will be paid with returned books rather than cash, not adding to cash flow.
Nevertheless, hopefully the library will get its books back, which was their original intent. In approximate terms there was about $8,000 outstanding, consisting mainly of the value (at purchase price) of unreturned DVDs and books. About $3,500 of that amount is due from 2009, and after the more hard line approach, with the corresponding publicity, the library collected about $2,500 in December as a result of letters were sent in October 2009, plus another $1,000 in January 2010. Again this is just approximate, but I understand that the value of unreturned library books or uncollected fines prior to 2006 was written off, so the $8,000 looks to be down to $4,500 (probably less) after the December and January collections, and represents past dues (value of books plus late fees for DVDs) from 2007 through 2009. Library Director Margaret Howe-Soper is going to get the Selectmen the actual amount due for the next meeting.
Police Chief Sam Albert was next, presenting his budget, with the 2% reduction, to the Selectmen and Advisory Board. The main part went smoothly, as Sam met his goal, and most of the questioning was whether he felt he was able to operate at this lower level of funding, particularly with less training budgeted. Chief Albert replied that although he felt he had cut as much as possible, he did think he would still be able to maintain services, and that regarding training, the police have used online training to supplement their direct training, saving money. The reductions in the police department budget were approximate as listed below:
Salaries (Overtime and Part-time officers) | $22,000 |
Tuition Reimbursement | $5,000 |
Building Maintenance | $1,000 |
Travel & Misc | $2,400 |
| $30,400 |
Money for our half of the Quinn bill was left in the budget, and much of the cost in 2009 for part-time police officers was incurred during the ‘once in a century ice storm’.
There was also some discussion of revenue brought in by the police department, mainly through speeding and parking tickets, permits, and other miscellaneous income sources, which total about $80K a year. Interestingly, the money collected is limited by the state, and also divided up by a state formula. For instance, fines and permit fees collected are split 50/50 between Westminster and the state. The town also gets a 10% premium for all detail work billed by the Westminster Police Department, regardless of from which town the police originate (if Princeton police work a detail in Westminster, Westminster gets an administrative fee which represents a 10% surcharge of the amount paid to the Princeton police). Of course, the money to pay the police detail is coming from the contractors, who are obligated to use police details in MA, and the money to pay the contractors (who mark up their costs) comes from taxpayers, but nevertheless, it’s nice to get some money back for the town.
There is also a cost associated with raising fees, for instance parking tickets—“the book” costs about $3,000-4,000 to redo if parking ticket fines are raised. There was also a discussion about charging for false alarms at homes that have automated alarms, and for providing the service. Currently we haven’t charged for excessive false alarms in years, and the cost to hook up directly to the police station with a house alarm is $200 per year.
The Animal Control Officer’s budget also falls under the Police Department Budget, and this one, although substantially less, is more complicated since we split the costs with Ashburnham. In brief, the Animal Control Officer’s salary and benefits are split 50/50 with Ashburnham, and Ashburnham supplies the kennel/pound and all associated expenses, while Westminster supplies the Animal Control officer’s official vehicle and all associated costs associated with that vehicle. The cost in the salary and benefits category for the Animal Control officer (who is an Ashburnham employee) was up significantly for the 2010-11 budget, but only because the expenses were booked elsewhere in the current fiscal year budget, the first year this ‘sharing’ arrangement took place.
Old business wrapped up quickly from there. Happily, the Selectmen signed a letter to Mr. Thomas Waruzila, District Highway Director, asking him to intervene with and speed up the Depot Road Bridge Project, as a result of a meeting held earlier in the day between concerned citizens and business owners, state officials, our State Rep (Lew Evangelidis), and Carly Antonellis of our State Senator Jennifer Flanagan’s office as well as representatives from the Massachusetts Department of Transportation. This project has been dragging on for over a year now, is only estimated to be 36% complete, and the state is considering an extension beyond the originally budgeted 500 days, to close to 700 days, because the contractor discovered boulders when setting the pilings. My note: the bridge over Lake Champlain, recently in the news, is expected to be completed in 720 days, and that bridge is 2 miles long and required the demolition and clean up of an existing, similarly sized bridge.
New business started out with a discussion of the warrants for the upcoming May Town Meeting. Last week was the last week for warrants to be submitted, so the Selectmen voted to close off the warrant, at the urging of the Advisory Board. It was noted that since the warrant is controlled by the Selectmen, they can reopen it they feel it necessary.
The also voted to keep the spending freeze in place, but only for expenditures above $500, as discussed and decided upon in the last meeting. Karen Murphy noted that she’d only had one request to approve an expenditure in the past week, so from the point of view of the department heads, this change removed the burden of the spending freeze when managing their departments on a day to day basis.
Laila Michaud noted that some people had approached her with questions regarding the warrants—mainly, what are they, and John Fairbanks said that the warrants are public record in Town Hall, and if anyone wants to know what they are about, they can get a copy there.
The only contentious part of the meeting occurred when discussing $60,000 approved by the voters to do an engineering study for a new senior center. Don Barry was quite irate, mainly at John Fairbanks, for not releasing the money to do the study. He stated that it wasn’t right that seniors constitute 18% of the population, and can’t even get the $38K released to start the study. Apparently Don and other volunteers have been working on this project, and he feels it should go forward.
The problem from the Selectmen’s viewpoint is that the $60K (there were two votes involved, one of which is for $38K) is only the first step in a project that could cost upwards of $1MM, so why start if there’s no money to continue? That brings up the question of why the $60K was approved in the first place, but in any case the topic will be reconsidered in July after everyone sees what next year’s budget looks like, which based on expected cuts in local aid from the state, is probably not going to be rosy.
Note:John Fairbanks answered this question (why approved in the first place?) via email.
"When the project started the picture of overall finances (both Town and State) and expected revenues was much rosier than it is now. Also we spent $1.5 million out of free cash a few years back to make the 2nd library construction cost more bearable to Town taxpayers. It had been hoped by some that we could have used that $1.5 M on a new senior center, but the timing was off."
Laila Michaud joined with Bud Taylor and all the other Selectmen in emphasizing how important it is that these MUOC meetings be televised, so the public can be informed, but unfortunately our local cable access group (AWCA) does not have the resources to cover these meetings. Someone asked for volunteers to film the meetings, and Brian Ruland volunteered, although concern was expressed that he might not be able to be trained in the use of the filming equipment in time for the next meeting. Brian stated he does have previous experience with filming for TV.
Overall, it was a good meeting, and I was struck by the amount of time both the Advisory Board and the Board of Selectmen are putting into the budgeting process (which is in addition to regular town business), with some members of these committees also serving on other committees, such as the Mixed Use Overlay Committee. It’s a lot of time to volunteer and spend in Town Hall.