Budget Forums Announced
Both the town and the schools are busy drafting their 2010-2011 budgets in preparation for the many hearings, meetings, and votes that are to come in the future. At this point, it’s too early to say what the town budget will look like as we need to see some additional numbers such as cost increases, grand list growth, and projected revenues as well as potential cuts in state aid. I’m hopeful that in February we will have a working budget to begin discussions with.
In discussions with Board of Finance Chairman Bruce Hayn and Board of Education Chairman Ron Goldstein, we decided to continue the practice of holding a budget forum as was done last year. This year, we will be holding a forum on Wednesday, January 27th at 7PM in the Bacon Academy cafeteria. There will be a snow make-up date of January 28th. Childcare services will be provided onsite.
During this forum, a volunteer moderator will solicit questions from the audience and the chairmen of the various boards will try to address your issues. Additionally, this is a great opportunity for the public to let us know what services and issues are most important to you so we can incorporate that feedback into the budget process.
This is likely to be the toughest budget cycle we have seen in a long time. We need as much participation as possible from the public in order to ensure the decisions we make align with your priorities. Please take the time to attend this forum or any of the public meetings that will be held in the coming months. For the most recent listings of budget meetings and other information, you can visit the town’s website at www.colchesterct.gov/budget.
Legal Services to be Reviewed
As a town, we require legal services for a variety of reasons. Union negotiations, land acquisitions, lawsuits and appeals, zoning opinions, and employee issues all need legal support at times. While I will always strive to minimize our use of attorneys, there will be many times where it is unavoidable.
Over the last three years, we have spent anywhere from $172,000 to $234,000 per year on legal services. We obviously want to reduce this number as much as possible and I am pursuing two methods of accomplishing this.
The first method is avoiding situations where legal services are needed. Through proper training of staff, boards, and commissions, we can endeavor to make ourselves more self sufficient and capable of handling issues in town without using attorneys.
The second method involves which firms we use. No matter what, we will have to use legal service throughout the year. Nothing the town does can ever eliminate that need. However, it’s important to continually review which firms we use to identify the most cost-effective ones. I’m in the process of conducting this review right now and the end result may be a new firm representing Colchester in certain areas.
- Gregg Schuster
First Selectman
Previous Selectman Notes can be viewed at
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