Finance Committee Minutes – 6 February 2007, Hapgood Room
Meeting called to order at 7:35 p.m.
Members present: Colwell, Donovan, McKenna, Mead, Ricci, Russo, Sobalvarro
Administrators present: Leonard
Review of Selectmen’s Budget:
Steve presented his review and follow-up from our last meeting.
The Fire budget assumes academy training for 3 firefighters/year; changing this to 2 firefighters could reduce cost to $2600
The Police OT increase ($13.5) reflects OT used in prior year, and increased steps for officers. Schedule changes (the 4:2 change) have also affected the OT; YTD actual is $32k.
Cost of the SAFE program (net of donations) TBD. Still in budget for $2k.
Open question re. Counsel costs if Fruitlands is resolved; still in budget for $7k
COA Increase (presented by Charlene Philips of the Council on Aging):
The COA presented the rationale behind increasing the outreach worker’s hours based on Harvard’s demographics. The town currently funds 10 hours of outreach; with an additional 5 hours plus 4 hours funded by a grant, outreach would be a 19 hour/week position. The MA Council on Aging provides a grant of $4467/year, based on the 2000 census data for Harvard.
The Friends of the COA was encouraged to continue their fundraising appeal letter, and to publicize the existence and needs of Harvard Help for the community.
Override Configurations:
Given a ceiling of $800k, the net effect of changes to the override from reducing library ($30k, staffing changes), pond electric ($4k), and legal ($7k) = $964,916.
A discussion ensued regarding components of the School Committee’s budget.
From their total request of $882k, minus $165k to the reserve for SPED, they are requesting an additional $717k. In order to budget for the proposed new hires, the total requested budget is $787k ($717k + (10k x 6 hires)).
The meeting adjourned at 9:35 pm.
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