Town's safety departments tapped more than their share
Published on December 6th, 2006
STONEHAM, MA - A recent survey conducted by Selectman Paul Rotondi concluded that the town's safety departments tapped a disproportionate share of annual operating costs when compared to the budgets of 52 surrounding communities.
According to the first-term Selectman, he pulled financial data from the Mass. Department of Revenue in order to investigate how Stoneham spends its money and whether those expenses are in line with other municipalities.
And when he finally crunched all the numbers, the results took him by surprise, given some community members' complaints that the school department gets far too much of the town's tax revenue and state aid.
"What came out of this is when you look at the police, fire, and to a certain extent the public works department, we spend above the median of what other towns do. And what we spend on schools is actually well below the median percentage," Rotondi explained in an interview this week.
"I have to admit that what surprised me the most was how our money was being spent. The perception in town is that the schools are getting everything, and that doesn't appear to be the case," the first-term Selectman added.
In addition to those findings, Rotondi's exercise also confirmed another popular contention amongst town officials: That residential homeowners comprise the majority of the town's tax base.
According to the survey findings, not only does Stoneham lack a solid commercial tax base, pushing much of the burden onto local citizens, but the assessed values of those homes ranks higher than the average value of most other communities.
During an interview on Tuesday, Town Administrator Ron Florino worried about whether Rotondi's initial reports properly compared operating costs between Stoneham and surrounding cities and towns.
Specifically, the Town Administrator argued that while police, fire, and DPW workers appear to be getting paid well above the average salaries of those 52 communities, some factors, such as holiday pay, may be skewing the figures.
"We kicked a lot of other benefits into the base-pay. So some of these other benefits that communities pay out separately may not have been included in the survey," the Town Administrator said.
"But right now, with the ways things are financially, we want to make sure we're spending our money in the right places. And I think a survey like this can only help. We're looking at cutting next year, so this is just another way to look at how we spend," Florino added.
According to Rotondi, he agrees with the Town Administrator in that his initial findings could turn out to be off-base, once a comprehensive understanding of other communities' spending structures is gained.
And so after presenting his survey to the Selectmen, School Committee, and Finance Board, he chose 16 Massachusetts' communities that he felt shared many of Stoneham's population, budgetary, and other demographic characteristics, and mailed a much more comprehensive questionnaire to those cities and towns.
"I'm not trying to hold any information back, but you do have to be careful. And I don't want to make rash statements without the data to back it," the first-term Selectman said. "This [initial] analysis is a broad-based review that concluded that our salary structures are out of whack with surrounding communities."
According to Selectman Tony Kennedy, he agrees that the still to be received questionnaires from those 16 communities will give town officials a better insight into how Stoneham spends its money.
However, with an estimated $1.9 to $3 million-budget deficit hanging on the horizon, Kennedy wonders what the Selectman can do with that information to solve that pending financial crisis.
"He did a good job in rounding up all that information, but the challenge is that we still have this budget deficit. So the question is how do we implement [the survey] findings to address that budget deficit," Kennedy said.
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