Hartford
On Thursday at 6 p.m. in the Town Hall, Selectboard members will meet with newly hired Town Manager Leo Pullar for his first budget workshop; the Selectboard identified a target range of between zero and 3 percent growth over the current year’s $16.4 million municipal budget, and Pullar said he is angling for a flat budget.
“My focus is zero percent growth,” said Pullar on Tuesday. “Last year the operations budget was $16.4 million. It’s my goal to be no more than that.”
“That’s the exciting thing about Leo,” said Selectboard Vice-Chairwoman Rebecca White. “He’s comfortable with zero percent growth, not forever, but for this year so there’s a good starting point for new discussions in future years.”
Pullar said there are areas in which town spending could be curtailed, or could use its purchasing power to bring down the cost of goods and services.
The budget will emerge in more detail over the coming weeks, as the Selectboard holds a series of workshops between now and Jan. 10, at which time members hope to approve a recommended budget. Their recommendation will be sent to town voters for consideration during the 2017 Town Meeting in March.
White acknowledged that pursuing a flat budget is a major shift from the last two budget cycles, during which officials said they had identified a dramatic gap between the town’s resources and its needs.
Former Selectboard Chairman Chuck Wooster and former interim Town Manager Steven Locke were among the town officials who, over the past two budget cycles, described a chronic, $700,000 difference between the town’s available funds and its ability to keep up with needed equipment purchases for the fire, police and public works departments.
In addition, the town has a list of capital improvement projects, including a multimillion-dollar plan to fix a sagging retaining wall on Fairview Terrace, with a total price tag of approximately $118 million.
Those hard realities are part of what led the town to abandon a $600,000 plan to repair Wright Reservoir, a popular fishing spot on Hurricane Hill that has instead been drained to protect the public from a possible catastrophic breach.
Pullar said that, casting fresh eyes on the budget, he thinks some of those needs might be less pressing than has been previously assumed, and that the capital improvement plan needs to be brought into line with reality.
“Visions without resources are just a hallucination,” he said.
He said the Department of Public Works, which is headed by Rich Menge, is seeking several big equipment purchases, but that he wants to consider a slower vehicle replacement schedule.
“Just because our books say you have to replace a snow plow every seven or eight years, is that what it really means?” Pullar asked. “The biggest thing we need to look at really hard is our capital purchases and our capital improvement plan.”
He said that, in the past, the town has been able to avoid such frequent replacements.
“This town has deferred capital purchases for many years. A piece of equipment here, a piece there and we’ve gotten another year or two out of them without a major problem,” Pullar said.
The town is currently negotiating contracts with its workforce, which will impact the budget. Pullar said the town is also seeking to shift to a different health care plan for its employees that will limit the town’s expenditures without hurting the quality of the plan.
Pullar said the impact of a flat budget on the tax rate is uncertain, because revenues are also a shifting picture.
A projected growth of 1.5 percent in the Grand List will help increase revenues, which could ease the pressure on the municipal tax rate, which is currently 9.46 cents per hundred dollars of assessed property value, or $2,366 on a home valued at $250,000.
“We’re just starting out but there’s a fair amount of optimism,” said Selectboard member Simon Dennis. Dennis said he wants to see more details before he concludes that zero-growth budget is the wisest course to pursue.
“It’s a complicated question and nobody knows for sure, but my personal opinion is that we are not out of the woods yet,” he said.
Dennis said he was excited to see how the outcome of a townwide survey might inform the Selectboard’s budget decisions. Two years ago, facing the prospect of reducing town services, the Selectboard initiated the survey to gain information on what services were valued most highly by town residents; the survey has been administered to nearly 1,000 residents over the past few months, and a report on its findings will be presented to the board in December.
Matt Hongoltz-Hetling can be reached at mhonghet@vnews.com or 603-727-3211.