Board of Selectmen Meeting
March 8, 2010
By Jay Shenk
Not an upbeat meeting: Nick Hay resigns from Board of Selectmen, budget woes for the schools and the town, and possible big tax increases
The meeting started off on an unfortunate note, as Selectman Chairman Nick Hay resigned, effective immediately, at 7:00pm promptly. It doesn’t appear the TV cameras were on yet, so many people (if ‘many’ watch the meetings) missed his quick resignation speech, but what he said was short and to the point. He was resigning for personal reasons, it was effective immediately, he thanked Westminster for the opportunity to serve them, and finally noted that he would not be talking to the press, and asked that the press let him and his family deal with this privately.
Nick’s resignation was triggered by a DWI and accident in Jaffrey, NH this past Friday, and followed two other recent setbacks—the problem with the counterfeit inspection sticker, and then not receiving the caucus nomination at the Westminster Citizens’ caucus. Even before the accident, Nick was facing a tough re-election challenge from Joe Flanagan. Today (Monday March 9, 2010) is the last day for anyone to file papers to run against Joe Flanagan. At this point he is the only candidate, although Bud Taylor has taken out papers to run (but not returned them), and at least one other candidate is rumored to be considering a run to replace Nick. Since only 32 signatures are required to get on the ballot, we won’t know until 5:00PM today who else, if anyone, will actually run against Joe Flanagan.
As noted on our front page, it’s too bad to see Nick have to exit under these circumstances. He brought a lot to the Board, particularly since he was by far the youngest Selectman, and was also a ‘townie’, having been born and raised in Westminster. He’s still in his twenties, so there is plenty of time for him to move past this event, and see it in the rearview mirror as just a speed bump learning experience. Plus, Nick was always friendly, likeable, and unassuming, making him easy to talk with.
The meeting from then on focused mainly on the budget, which is looking organized but grim at this point, but first the remaining Selectmen, John Fairbanks and Laila Michaud, signed a letter to the Chairman of the ZBA, Paul Bartkus, asking him to consider (the Selectmen cannot ‘order’ the ZBA to do anything, but their opinion obviously carries weight) requesting the applicant who is looking to put a cell tower for AT&T in parking lot #3 at the ski area, to delay getting approval until the town is able to get a ‘master wireless infrastructure plan’ in place. The letter also noted that there appear to be good alternative sites with less downside to the town.
This cell tower issue was dealt with at length in a prior Selectmen’s meeting—in a nutshell, the arguments against locating the cell tower in lot #3 are safety (ice or snow allegedly could congregate on the tower and then blow off into the parking lot), and being uncompetitive—the tower is allegedly not high enough to accommodate all the wireless carriers who would want to locate on the tower, so Westminster would have to build another one when requested, when one taller one would have been sufficient. Two complicating factors are that cell tower approval has to be given rather quickly based on some recent laws designed to speed the development of a wireless infrastructure (and this project has been with the ZBA for quite some time), and the underlying NIMBY current, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing—having anything built right beside your home, be it a cell tower, a huge 40B apartment complex, a wind turbine, or a layover station, tends to focus your attention and spur action, much like a massacre in Nigeria (as recently happened) would be more pressing to us if it had happened in Massachusetts.
It is notable that a new term (at least to me) was used in connection with this tower, and this terminology apparently originated with the State—the tower is in the “viewshed” (as in “watershed”, which is often protected) of Wachusett Mountain. The Massachusetts Historical Commission is the state body that was involved in limiting the height of the tower, because it interfered with the viewshed of this historic area.
Put simply, a ‘wireless infrastructure plan’ would allow the town to maximize wireless coverage in the town with a minimum number of cell towers, but unfortunately we don’t have such a plan, and getting one will cost time and money, and we haven’t even started yet. The Selectmen signed their letter asking the ZBA to postpone a decision, if possible, until such a plan is completed.
Next came budget discussions with two moderately sized departments that perform a lot of town duties, a brief talk by Ken O’Brien, a democratic candidate to replace the big shoes of Lew Evangelidis, who is running for Sheriff, and some talk of the speed with which the state is reimbursing Westminster for various projects, mainly road work.
Town Treasurer/Collector Melody Gallant noted that the town has to borrow $94,361.68 until June 22, 2010, because we haven’t been reimbursed yet by the state, which is exceptionally slow this year, no doubt because they have no money. Our interest rate is 1.3%, again reflecting our excellent credit rating.
Melody also spoke to an article that will be considered at Town Meeting—a request for $10,000 to pay for filing and legal fees to collect past due taxes, a list that is continuing to grow. She did note some good news—Westminster just collected $150,000 from Rebanna Road Development last week for past due taxes. That is not the largest tax bill outstanding, however, as Westminster Properties still owes $162,000. I’m not sure how these types of situations are figured into the overall town revenue—for instance, is there in a town budget the equivalent of an ‘allowance for bad debt’?
Both the department budgets discussed were moderately sized. In the $80,000 to $110,000 range in terms of outlays, so although I’m sure it was done for reasons of equity, a 2% cut in expenses for both departments combined is perhaps $4000, which is small potatoes compared with the overall budget shortfall which was rearing its ugly head by the end of the meeting. Both Denise MacAloney and Melody Gallant appear to be making do with budgets that are continually shrinking, and this work is recognized by the Selectmen.
Next up was Ken O’Brien, a Democratic candidate for State Representative. He gave a very brief talk, and also sat through the entire meeting, something for which I have to give him credit. He said he’d been a Selectmen in Holden for 5 1/2 years, was a small business owner (a roofing company), and helped set up the Holden Historic District. He noted that Westminster is the second largest town in his potential district, and wants us to consider him for State Representative. Keith Harding pointed out that it would be a good idea to afford equal time to any other candidates for State Representative, should they also want to speak at the Board of Selectmen meeting. For the record, it’s worth noting that Ken’s younger brother Joe O’Brien is the mayor or Worcester.
Denise MacAloney’s then reviewed her budget, and the main points dealt with involved attending conferences and the fact that ZBA advertising was for some reason in her budget. Neither involved a whole lot of money. Denise was emphatic that cutting funds for attending conferences would be counterproductive, since that is where they meet their state counterparts, and essentially learn what the new election and tax laws mean and how they should be implemented.
At this point the lights dimmed, and Ken Burstall, the Chairman of the Advisory Board, began his budget presentation. It is very important to note two things—first, and importantly, this budget for fiscal 2011 is still in the discussion phase—very little is set in stone. Equally important, however, is that this budget is certainly valid ‘directionally’, meaning that the budget isn’t going to be that far off in any direction.
The big culprit in Westminster’s budget woes, and for that matter, in the school’s budget problems, is the State and their economic crisis, which as they say about many things, “runs downhill”; but there are other issues as well. In terms of local revenue, the main factor is declining revenues from the landfill, a situation magnified by rapidly falling state aid. The graph below is exclusive of onetime, non recurring large cash infusions to the town, as they will not repeat.
What this leaves Westminster facing, on a preliminary, estimated basis, is a budget deficit of approximately $720,000, which is obviously a big number, and this is after asking for, and generally getting 2% expense cuts from all town departments excluding the schools, and also setting cost of living increases to zero for the 2011 budget year. Incidentally, John Fairbanks was correct when he asserted in a prior meeting that our Personnel Board takes into account various government indices such as the Consumer Price Index (CPI) when recommending Cost of Living Adjustments (COLA). Last year almost all such indices stayed flat or in some cases actually declined. In one state, employees actually got salary decreases from contracts negotiated with COLA clauses.
Not included in this budget is $170,000 suggested to be put into a fund to partially offset the shock of Westminster’s increased percent of the “foundation” school budget in 2012, estimated at $340,000—Ashburnham is apparently electing to go to a new method of dividing up shares of the AWRSD school budget for fiscal 2012, called the Aggregate Wealth Model”, which will place a larger burden on Westminster taxpayers due to their ‘state calculated’ greater ability to pay for the schools. Additionally, even if both Ashburnham and Westminster both pay their usual percent of “2 1/2 plus growth” to the schools, which is about $230,000 or so each for 2011, the school district is still a massive $800,000 in deficit for 2011, and so will need to ask for more money, make more cuts, ask for overrides, or some combination of the above. At this point I don’t know exactly why the school system is short so much money, but that will be explored in a future article. For now it’s probably a good guess that it relates primarily to state aid cuts, but that remains to be seen.
Incidentally, the most important thing that Ken O’Brien said while at the meeting was that when Holden and Rutland went this route for funding the schools, Holden petitioned the state for more aid to help offset the increased cost, and actually got some more aid. Whether this can happen here is to be seen, but it was at least hopeful. In a prior story we dealt with the effect of going to the “AWM”, and the unfortunate consequence of this will probably be decreased funding for the schools, as Westminster will probably balk at spending so much more money, which will cut the discretionary portion of the school’s budget. That’s why the state is phasing in this new model of divvying up school expenses, but in this economy the unintended consequences of the law are looming large.
Not reflected explicitly in the budget is that there is an effort this year to not take from the ‘stabilization’ funds monies that really should be budgeted for in the operating budget, as items known as “raise and appropriate”, with appropriate meaning “earmark” rather than “suitable”. For instance, in this preliminary budget there is $500,000 appropriated to repair the roads. It was originally thought that half this money should come from stabilization funds, to lessen the impact, but the consensus was that this depletes the stabilization funds while hiding the true cost of fixing the roads (which certainly need it).
Some final notes—Not all town monies are in the general fund. We have Enterprise Funds, Stabilization funds, and a transfer station fund. The stabilization funds currently contain about $2.16MM (after the street sweeper is purchased for about $200,000), the Enterprise funds contain approximately $1.1MM and the Transfer Station Fund contains about $330,000. If this budget holds and taxes increase $720,000, that increase will represent a tax increase of over 5% for Westminster taxpayers, which comes on top of a $500 betterment fee that would be applied to water and sewer bills for the Whitman River Pumping Station. These numbers do not include any increased school funding beyond the “2-1/2% plus growth” that is usually given to the schools.