Let’s get off the casino issue for now and look at what we have ahead of us this coming month at Town Meeting. Government continues to play games with our taxes, and not just Washington! Locally we cannot get the detail nor the transparency on our budget. The classic example locally is the Police and Fire budgets where each year they spend$150 to $200 thousand over what we appropriate at Town Meeting. When Town Hall is asked, “How?”, we are told that they transfer funds at the end of the year; first from budgets that may have a balance to those that don’t. The Town Manager admitted this to the seniors April 10th and later the Finance Director stated the same to the Advisory Committee. This however has gone on for at least 5 years without any details.
We happen to have a transfer by-law, which stipulates that the SELECTMEN shall either directly or through their agent seek the AdCom’s approval for transfers. This process also includes another $400,000 item, snow and ice costs each and every year. In Fiscal ‘11, there was no (by-law required) vote on this transfer. How did Town Hall and the auditors approve said payments? And there is no or only a small, $10,000 transfer for fire and police each year, without any involvement of the Selectmen! And the Reserve Fund (reserved for transfers) amounts to only $75,000 this year!
The FY ‘12 detail on the Police requests, to select but one, is as follows:
regular wage and salary account $2,195,072.
OT budget request 398,198.
Total $2,593,270.
Actual OT costs in the prior 5 years is well above $500,000 and last year $597,000. Yet we are told that we spent (as an example FY ‘11) on a $2,572,112 appropriation, only $2,539,235. in spite of the $597,000 OT instead of the $398,000! This amounts to a $50,000 savings, while spending the $200,000 more!
There are some grants, some permit and gun fees, and even some court reimbursement costs, and even three positions in this FY appropriation which were not filled ... WHAT HAPPENED? Which of each is an offset cost, and which are next year’s general fund items? Did we actually spend $2,793,270 rather than the $2.5 million number and where is the accounting? Is it merely unauthorized transfers without any transparency? Give us the DETAIL! And not just lip service! Give us, as requested a year ago, the full list and application by department of the fees, grants, etc. There is no basic listing in Town, on the Web, nor in the Annual Report.
There are other OT accounts, not even reported to the AdCom during their deliberations. How do we make up these funds? ... ask Town Hall and their answer is that they take care of it at the end of year by moving funds from one account to another, with payments from fees and so on. So why must we appropriate as much as we do?
I will continue to ask for this material at the Selectmen’s and the Advisory Committee meetings, and at Town Meeting.
