MONSON FINANCE COMMITTEE MINUTES MARCH 21, 2011
Present: Jim Pennington, Peter Fimognari, Gerry Brayton, Bob Margerison, Christine Edwards, William Dominguez, Maureen O’Sullivan,
Absent: Bob Finnegan, Brenda Payette (Administrative Assistant)
The meeting was convened at 6:45pm
OLD BUSINESS / NEW BUSINESS:
We discussed priorities for town. The priorities were Fire, Police, and EMT’s level funded unless override passes for them.
Highway Department-level fund with Chapter 90 money and utilize a possible shift of a position from Cemetery to Highway and not fill Cemetery position.
We discussed possible options for budget cuts and they included:
*Ask School Department to come in and answer some questions on the School Transportation budget.
Options included cutting purchase of 1 bus, add money to maintenance line
Cut to 1 bus purchase, cut transportation budget a set amount also
Instead of 12 runs for secondary, have 6 runs and develop central pickup spots to save money.
Encourage raising fees for riders 6-12 and finding out if people will be using buses earlier.
Raise fees for bus transportation, consolidate routes, purchase short buses instead of large buses, and use vans to pick up small routes.
*Level fund Highway Department salaries, using Chapter 90 money to supplement.
*Eliminate Assistant Directors position in Parks and Recreation
Go to bid to see how much mowing would cost if bid out to a vendor for schools, town, cemetery and parks/recreation.
Cemetery position goes to highway, not fund new position in Cemetery.
Discussion centered also on the following: Does a business operate in the red continually? At what point do you increase fees to make it cost effective?
Do we need two directors (Cemetery and Parks and Rec) to be mowing grass when a lower paid individual could do the job?
Pathfinder discussion:
Pathfinder’s budget came in at $897,797 for all towns to vote on and $919,667 if capital work was included in the overall budget.
Budget overview:
All things being the same without any cuts the budget overview worksheet
showed us the following:
Available revenue~ ~ ~~~21,930,975
Budget requests~ ~ ~ ~ ~ (22,129,024)
Amount to cut (198,049)
Override for EMT~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~~86,242
Amount to cut (111,807)
Pathfinder if capital approved (22,170)
Amount to cut (133,977)
Agenda items for next meeting:
*Meet with School Committee regarding School Transportation budget.
*Meet with Police Chief about budget and questions.
*Discuss priorities for Selectmen’s meeting on Tuesday, March 29, 2011
*Continued discussion on possible budget cut areas.
The next scheduled meeting of the Finance Committee is:
Monday, March 28, 2011 at 6:45pm.
The meeting was adjourned at 8:30pm
Meeting Minutes taken by Mr. Pennington, Finance Committee Chairperson, in Brenda Payette’s absence.
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