Town alters, endorses F plan
Published on March 26th, 2003
STONEHAM, MA - Town officials formally endorsed a concrete budget plan for fiscal year 2004 this Monday night at a joint meeting between the school committee, board of selectmen, and finance and advisory board.
An altered version of option F, a working model for the budget approved by selectmen and finance and advisory board members last week, the budget would reduce a planned $2.1 million in school and town department cuts by $1 million. According to town administrator David Berry, that $1 million in savings will significantly reduce the planned layoffs of over fifty workers.
"With this budget, layoffs are probably in the range of six to ten town workers and ten to twelve in the school staff," said Berry.
According to school committee member Dan Moynihan, no teachers would lose their jobs with the projected cuts. Instead, the school's support staff would be reduced. While Berry has not fully determined whom the town will layoff from its departments, he did outline some of the job reductions in a memo to the board of selectmen.
"I have succeeded in restoring all positions and hours except for the part-time position in the town administrator's budget, some part-time seasonal hours in the town administrator's budget and the recreation budget and possibly some part-time hours in the library's budget," the letter read.
Town officials plan to bridge the remaining budget gap by utilizing $1,051,851 from the stabilization fund and $950,000 from water and sewer surpluses. Those figures differ significantly from last week's proposed option F, which originally suggested using $1.26 million from the water and sewer surpluses and $800,000 from the stabilization fund.
According to town selectman Anthony Kennedy, changes in the use of both funds stemmed from a request by Massachusetts' officials concerned about the high use of the water and sewer surpluses. Because some of the water and sewer surpluses represent funds overcharged Stoneham residents, the department of revenue advised Stoneham to place a portion of that money into an account to help defer future water rates.
"What happened is that the department of revenue...was encouraging us to save some of the surplus for what it's meant for and not use the whole thing," said Kennedy of the changes.
After acknowledging that the funds were meant to slash future water and sewer rates, Kennedy and selectmen Charlie Smith stressed that extraordinary times forced them to use the surpluses.
"We better make it very clear that this water and sewer money we have to use, because people are going to say, 'I want my money back,'" said Smith.
In addition to the water and sewer rates, officials would further balance the budget deficit through several revenue raising ideas including, leasing the old Central School, placing a cell-phone tower on the fire station, and expanding the town's after school programs.
Several school committee representatives questioned whether an after-school program would raise the $100,000 listed in the budget plan. Claiming that initial surveys indicated a widespread interest in the expanded programs, Moynihan listed some of the benefits and downsides to the program.
Among the benefits of expanding the after-school program to four neighborhood schools, parents would not have to depend on an ill-fated busing program to transport their children to a central location. However, as Moynihan explained, offering the program at four schools would also quadruple overhead costs and make it more difficult to reach the $100,000 goal.
"Right now we have about thirty to thirty-five parents participating in the program," said Moynihan. "We're trying to decentralize that program and shift it to four schools to get a broader participation. However, when you increase that to four schools you quadruple the overhead costs. You have to increase your participation level to 100 to offset that," he added.
School officials also detailed their limited success to date in finding parties interested in renting the old Central School. So far, school officials have received only one call of interest from the North Shore Collaborative, a day-care service. To broaden interest in the school, officials are considering rezoning the building to allow for commercial use.
"We're now looking at commercial renting space. Of course there would have to be a warrant article at the next town meeting to make a zoning change," said Moynihan, adding that the lease should also be extended from three to seven years.
Several other arguments concerning the budget proposal also arose as some board members questioned the use of one-time funds to balance the budget. Claiming that using those funds would only solve the budget crunch temporarily until similar budget constraints arose in fiscal year 2005, some officials urged restraint.
"It seems like we're just throwing money at the problem here... I'm going to play the devil's advocate here, because if I was sitting on the sidelines, I would say, 'jeez they were going to cut thirteen guys here and now we're not cutting any," said Smith.
Other board members brought up the taboo suggestion that an override might be necessary.
"I know that the premise of an override was shut down last week," said school committee member David Shields. "Does it make sense to look at a smaller override this year and say let's put X amount of dollars toward the stabilization fund?" he asked.
Responding to the criticisms of the use of one-time funds and suggestions that board members explore an override, finance and advisory board member Peter D'Angelo claimed that an override would only gain public support if the townspeople felt convinced all other measures were exhausted.
"When your back is against the wall, you do it. When the time comes, the very last resort is an override, and I don't think it's the case now," said D'Angelo.
Although last week's proposal included plans to create a driving-range at the Unicorn Golf Course and to privatize the Stoneham Arena, board members decided to strike those items from the budget.
"For the time being, we chose to take that out of the budget completely because we realized that we didn't have any concrete proposal or any handle on the costs of creating a driving range," explained Kennedy, adding that officials would explore those ideas in detail as a solution to offset predicted deficits in 2005.
In the weeks following May's town meeting, town officials plan to establish a citizen board that will examine each of the revenue proposals suggested at last March's town meeting and decide if they can be implemented to offset costs for 2005.
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