Hartford
“I think we’re ready to make some tough decisions,” Selectboard Chairman Dick Grassi said, after the board received its first draft of a proposed fiscal year 2019 operating budget from Town Manager Leo Pullar earlier this week. The budget will come before voters in March.
After Pullar’s budget presentation, Grassi sought to reassure the public that there is no immediate danger for the Sherman Manning pools near the Hartford High School campus on Highland Avenue.
“We’re not talking about closing,” Grassi said. “We’re talking about a conversation.”
Closing the pool, which gives residents a low-cost swim option during the summer, was suggested during last year’s budget talks by Selectwoman Rebecca White. Though Tad Nunez, who was then the director of Parks and Recreation, spoke in favor of the idea last December, opposition from the public stymied serious discussions.
Earlier this year, the Parks and Recreation Department announced it intended to extend the pool’s summer season by about a week. Grassi noted that the pool is used heavily by the public and programs such as Ventures Day Camp.
“That is a big part of the Ventures Camp,” he said. “A lot of our kids still use that.”
The pool costs roughly $80,000 per year to operate, but has been the subject of frequent costly repairs for its vacuum system and leaks that have been, at times, difficult to pin down. Right now, the town’s capital improvement plan includes a $320,000 fix to the pool, a cost that Pullar said could be avoided if the town opted to simply shut the facility down.
The fate of the pool is just one of several important decisions to be made against a bleak backdrop that includes the contemplation of both budget cuts and tax increases.
Under the current year’s $15.28 million budget, the property tax rate is 95.8 cents per $100 of assessed property value.
The town is facing several seemingly unavoidable cost increases — a 9 percent increase in health care costs, a 14 percent increase in workers’ compensation insurance and a 10 percent increase in property and liability insurance. The loss of low-cost Department of Corrections work crews from the recently closed Southeast State Correctional Facility in Windsor also is hurting the town. Officials are seeking to draw on labor from other corrections facilities, but with no guarantee, Pullar is budgeting about $150,000 in added costs.
Those costs, combined with a series of requests from town department heads, would inflate the municipal budget to $17.1 million, but Pullar has recommended a series of cuts, including the closing of the pool, that would result in a budget of $16.16 million, which would result in a tax rate increase of 8.9 cents, or 9.3 percent, to $1.05 per $100 of assessed property value. That would increase the municipal tax bill on a $250,000 home from about $2,395 to about $2,625.
“I hope we all agree that 8.9 cents is not doable, acceptable and we can’t move it forward,” Grassi said. “So we have to make some tough decisions.”
Pullar recommended the board identify an additional $300,000 in additional cuts, which would bring the increase down to 7.6 percent. He suggested that the town was unlikely to meet the 6.1 percent target the Selectboard established earlier this year.
Though Pullar characterized his recommended reductions as “cuts,” in many cases, they are cuts to the department head requests, not cuts to existing expenditures in the budget. He recommended rejecting requests for a fire safety inspector, an information technology technician and a full-time firefighter. He recommended funding be lower than requested levels for cemeteries, paving, the Maxfield Sports Complex, and fire department vehicle reserve funds, among other things.
One area in which Pullar recommended actual cuts to existing funding levels is for most of the town’s libraries. His draft includes 10 percent reductions to funding levels for three libraries, which would result in a $9,400 cut to the Hartford Library, a $16,300 cut to the Quechee Public Library and a $2,800 cut to the Wilder Club and Library.
He also recommended that funding to the White River Junction Library be reduced from $15,000 to $10,000; Pullar said that would be enough to continue funding public reading rooms at the Bugbee Senior Center and near the Co-op.
The West Hartford Library, which has a budget of $47,700, was not included in the recommended cuts because it has a different governance structure, Pullar said.
“That’s a municipal library and statutorily, we’re required to provide funding to a certain level,” he said.
A year ago, Pullar and municipal officials successfully brought in a budget with zero percent growth. In January, Selectman Dennis Brown was the only one who voted against that budget, shortly after voicing concerns that it undermined the government’s efforts to catch up on a backlog of needs.
Pullar cited Brown when presenting the current budget.
“As Mr. Brown said, how much longer are we going to kick this stuff down the road, and when do you feel the pain?” he said.
As the Selectboard scrutinizes funding requests over the coming weeks, members could accept Pullar’s recommendations, or come in with a budget that is significantly higher, or lower. At 6 p.m. on Tuesday, the Selectboard will focus on fire, police and communications services, followed by a 6 p.m. workshop on Thursday to talk about parks and recreation, and cemeteries.
Matt Hongoltz-Hetling can be reached at mhonghet@vnews.com or 603-727-3211.