BRATTLEBORO-When Representative Town Meeting members rejected a $25 million municipal budget for the coming fiscal year, they returned it to local leaders for revision in hopes of lowering a 12% projected tax increase.
No one anticipated costs might instead climb higher.
Officials have discovered their original spending plan underestimated contracted expenses like payroll taxes, retirement contributions, and overtime. With the addition of the omissions and other accounting adjustments, the base budget's corrected total is $426,732 more than initially calculated, according to administrators and their updated spreadsheet.
As a result, the Selectboard will have to cut nearly a half-million dollars from the new number just to level down to the 12% tax hike defeated last month, leaders have determined.
"The budget news is really disappointing," Chair Elizabeth McLoughlin said at the start of a special April 24 session on the topic.
Five and a half hours later, the board asked Town Manager John Potter to return this week with a plan to cut $500,000 in expenses for the fiscal year that starts July 1. That would allow leaders to present a revised proposal at a special Town Meeting on May 27 that's lower than the original, if only by about $75,000.
"The numbers have been corrected and our task has gotten way more difficult," Vice-Chair Oscar Heller said.
Heller, newly elected to the board, headed the town's advisory Finance Committee this winter when it issued a rare public resolution questioning why local leaders, facing double-digit-percentage increases in staffing, health insurance, and trash disposal costs, weren't studying decreases in the biggest single source of spending: personnel.
"We recognize that the concept of staff cuts is painful," the committee said in its statement, "but we believe that considering it is an essential part of the responsible management of the town."
The Selectboard at the time - which lost three of its five members in March when the former chair didn't run for reelection and two incumbents were defeated - chose not to reduce employees.
On April 24, incumbent board member Peter Case, who has opposed layoffs, asked how the town would achieve $500,000 in savings.
Replied Potter: "It's going to come from positions."
And McLoughlin: "Nothing is off the table."
The Selectboard is scheduled to receive and review proposed reductions at a special session on May 1. Leaders so far have chosen not to fill two open administrative jobs: assistant town manager and finance director.
But they are considering the addition of three firefighters after determining that station overtime is so high - currently upward of $700,000 or more annually - that hiring help would be less expensive.
"I don't see any way to reduce that number," new Fire Chief Jay Symonds said of the overtime spurred by vacancies and contract requirements, "other than adding staff."
This News item by Kevin O'Connor originally appeared in VTDigger and was republished in The Commons with permission.