Click Below to see the Budget
increases.
The Prospect 2008 – 2009 Town Budget
or, What Should You Do With A 1984 Dump
Truck?
Assuming you’ve held
onto an aging vehicle this long, every year
you ask yourself, ‘Can it last another
year?’ Tough questions like this are at the
very heart of your household budget, along
with others as to what you really need to
spend next year. Every year your elected
officials take a similar look at what it
costs to keep Prospect running, and just
like your household, the costs of
essentially everything are going up. No one
likes to pay more for goods and services
than they have to, so it’s essential that
you get full value for every dollar you
spend.
The Prospect Town
Budget is the byproduct of many man-hours
effort and was put together at a series of
five (5) Budget Workshops held over the
preceding five (5) weeks. Unfortunately,
and although these were all well publicized
and are always open to the public, very few
residents took the opportunity to share
their ideas with us and learn more about the
budget process. On Thursday, May 1st
at 7:00pm at Community School we held a
‘Town Meeting’ where the proposed Town
Budget which had been previously approved by
your Town Council, and totally separate
from Region 16’s Education budget, was
presented.
For those of you who
were unable to attend this session, this
writing is intended to pass along important
information relative to the Town Budget, and
specifically to discuss the what, why and
how much, certain components will cost all
of us more this year. In no particular
sequence here are the more significant
items:
Winter Consumables
– last year we had to pay more than ever for
sand and salt, and this year the prices are
going up again – we are planning to spend an
additional $27,500; so please note the words
‘dirt’ and ‘cheap’ no longer belong in the
same sentence.
Petroleum Based
Products – always looking to maximize
savings, last year your town government paid
an average of $2.29 a gallon for heating
oil, and this year we’ve been advised to add
at least a dollar a gallon, so based on
about 23,000 gallons, that’s $22,900. We
also use a lot of gasoline and diesel fuel
and we are anticipating the increased cost
of those items will be $37,000.
Utilities –
Prospect purchases its electricity from a
consortium that guarantees us great rates,
and we’ve installed those new energy
efficient bulbs, so while those rates are
likely to increase, we don’t expect this to
be significant. The Water Company on the
other hand will charge us more. Prospect
pays rental for the water lines that run
through town, and for the fire hydrants that
are connected to it. More miles of piping,
20+ new hydrants and a general 12% increase
in rates computes to a $15,649 increase.
And remember, everyone living within 1,000
feet of a hydrant should already be saving
money on their homeowners / fire insurance.
Park Development
– This year we are increasing the budget by
$17,500 to assure that we continue to
address the growing usage by all the age
groups that enjoy our park system year
round. Everything from asphalt to state
mandated ‘organic’ fertilizer costs more
this year, and we use a lot of both.
Other Increases
– The ‘garbage’ that is collected every week
in town is transported to Bristol where it
is properly disposed of. We pay $65.50 per
ton delivered, and we’re expecting that this
will cost us $285,000 this year, an increase
of $10,000 over last year. Remember, we
only pay $33.50 per ton for ‘Recyclables’ so
properly sorting your ‘output’ can save
everyone some money. Prospect also has to
comply with a state mandate to update our
Waste Water Plan which will cost us an
additional $15,000 to complete.
Police Related
Increases – It is critical that we
provide our dedicated team with the tools
they need to do their job, and this year
it’s time to replace an aging vehicle with a
new leased model. This approach covers all
related vehicle maintenance, and unlike the
lease you and I would have on our personal
cars, at the end of the lease period,
Prospect gets to buy the vehicle for $1.00.
This approach will cost us $19,000 this
year. We also need to upgrade some other
equipment such as radios ($5,500) and
vehicle maintenance and gasoline (separate
from Prospect’s other gasoline account)
will increase by $10,000.
Employee Pay and
Benefits:
The Town Council took a
hard look at the salaries paid to all
Prospect Town employees. This analysis was
conducted using verifiable survey data from
other towns and input from various
department heads and other town officials.
We found that generally speaking, most
Prospect town employees are paid less than
their counterparts in similar municipal
positions, and in the case of our police
staff, much less. Based on these findings,
and in recognition of the quality
contributions our employee are making to our
town every day, the Town Council has
recommended the following:
Our Police Staff
– we anticipate paying (including increases,
weekend adjustments and overtime) $42,945
more than we did last year. While this will
still leave them with the lowest hourly pay
rate of any other area police department,
I’m sure it will be greatly appreciated, and
they have clearly earned it.
Other Town Employees
(Non-Union) – No ‘across the board’
increases were given. Effort was made to
reward above average performance and where
significant disparities in pay scale were
identified some adjustments were made. We
found essentially no circumstances where our
employees make more than the average pay for
substantially similar positions. At the end
of this process, we had indentified $47, 814
in salary increases. In the future we will
work toward more standardized job
descriptions to make such comparisons even
more applicable.
Other Town Employees
(Union) – Specifically this is our
Public Works team that keeps your roads safe
in the winter and your parks in such great
shape all year round. This year we’d agreed
on a 4% increase and with anticipated
overtime we expect that this will result in
an additional $30,310 in salaries paid.
Town Employee
Benefits – In total, for all full time
employees the increase in ‘Benefit Cost’
including medical and pension comes to
$53,762. If ‘Hartford’ comes through, we
may be able to add our municipal team onto
the same plans available to State workers,
thereby saving some significant dollars.
At the start of this
article, I asked “What should we do with a
1984 dump truck? This time there was no
other choice, it had to be replaced, and
this year the lease payment on an
appropriate replacement vehicle will be
$45,271. Add in another $19,176 which is
the ‘Net’ total increase for all other
budget changes, and that brings the
‘Total Increase’ in proposed spending for
the 2008 – 2009 Fiscal Year to $419,327.
The next step typically
would have been to present this at the
aforementioned Town Meeting and with the
ability to make cuts on individual budget
items, vote on the budget with a show of
hands. That ‘Town Meeting’ format has been
the traditional approach that Prospect and I
believe about 98 other towns in Connecticut
follow. On rare occasion, the Town Budget
has gone to ‘Referendum’ via petition, where
the voters’ only get to either accept or
reject the budget as presented as a whole.
This year, and as there had been only
minimal public participation, the majority
of the Town Council believed that it was in
everyone’s best interest to get the facts
out, and essentially ask the voters what
they think. So please mark your calendars:
The Town Budget Referendum will be a machine
vote on Monday, May 12th at
Community School (one voting location only)
from 6:00am to 8:00pm.
All of your elected
officials are well aware that any increase
puts a burden on everyone in Prospect, and
we have made every effort to keep the
expenses as low as possible and still
deliver to you the high quality services
that every Prospect resident has come to
expect. As you ponder the cost, please
consider the value, and also remember that
every dollar you pay in taxes to Prospect
benefits Prospect.
Please don’t give too
much weight to any rumors that you may hear
around town. Copies of the Proposed Budget
are available for free at Town Hall, along
with plenty of supporting documentation
about what’s inside the numbers. Also, on
the evening of Sunday, May 11th
please tune to channel 21 on your cable to
watch ‘Prospect, The Town On The Hill’,
where the focus will be on the proposed Town
Budget. If you have any questions, just
ask, and please let me know if you’re
interested in buying a 1984 dump truck – I
know where you might be able to pick one up.
Respectively Submitted For Your
Consideration – Tom Galvin, Chairman,
Prospect Town Council
.
