RANDOLPH — Voters shot down the Kimball Library budget on Town Meeting Day last week, but it wasn’t out of a lack of support for the nearly 125-year-old institution.
Prior to the vote, library director Amy Grasmick detected multiple errors in the spending plan that could only be remedied by a special election at a later date.
The library budget was a leading topic of conversation at the Selectboard meeting on Jan. 29.
The Selectboard considered the Kimball Library Board of Trustees’ proposal, which included a 22% overall increase in the budget.
Last year, the town approved $431,000 for the library, with $369,300 raised by taxes. The Library Board of Trustees asked the Selectboard to put a $529,000 budget on the ballot this year, with $440,000 raised by taxes.
After a back-and-forth discussion between the Selectboard and library representatives, the Selectboard ultimately shot down the $529,000 request, noting that a 22% increase would not be fair to other, more essential departments such as highway and police, which had single-digit increases on the ballot.
“When the library came and asked for a 22% increase, it was pretty offensive to a lot of people in town,” Selectboard member Stephanie Tyler said Tuesday by phone.
After a lengthy discussion, the Selectboard went forward with a counter of $458,000, with $369,600 raised by taxes, which is approximately $300 less than the amount raised by taxes last year.
This figure was calculated by Town Manager Trevor Lashua during the Jan. 29 meeting. The overall increase from last year was 6.4%.
Grasmick went home after the January meeting and noticed three problems with the budget proposal as approved.
The Selectboard’s counter budget proposed a 3.25% pay increase across the board based on staffing information from last year, but since then, a half-time employee had become a full-time employee, so the wages line was about $10,000 short, Grasmick said.
“(Lashua) just took the previous year’s number and applied 3.25% rather than digging down and looking at who’s employed for how many hours; who actually qualifies for benefits,” Grasmick said Monday by phone.
Tyler, however, said onus was on the library trustees to keep the Selectboard apprised of staffing changes to avoid this kind of situation.
“Without knowing that number, Trevor did the calculations correctly based on the information we had,” said Tyler.
The second problem was that the trustees had pledged to raise $50,000 to help offset the wage increase increase in the budget request. Since the Selectboard slashed the budget, the fundraising goal needed to be adjusted, down to around $25,000, said Grasmick. Keeping that figure at $50,000 was an oversight during the meeting, which led to a miscommunication over tax relief.
The third problem is that the Selectboard budget proposed a slight reduction of about $300 in the amount to be raised by property taxes. The Selectboard made the projection based on the assumption that the $50,000 pledged by the trustees had not changed. The $369,600 amount is $50,000 less than what would have actually been raised by taxes.
“There was nothing intentional about that on the Selectboard side. That was just how they (library trustees) offered to offset the tax liability,” Tyler said Tuesday by phone.
But since the 22% increase was declined, Trustees are looking to contribute less than $50,000 to offset taxes.
Upon discovering these “fatal flaws,” Grasmick reached out to the Selectboard on Jan. 30 to request an emergency meeting. The deadline for the wording for ballot measures was Feb. 2, so the window to correct errors was short.
On the same day, Jan. 30, Trevor informed Grasmick that no Selectboard members supported a emergency meeting to address the budget issues, she said.
According to Tyler, the appropriate time to raise concerns was at the Jan. 29 meeting during a discussion period on the matter directly ahead of Selectboard approval.
Grasmick felt the proposed budget should have been shared with library representatives prior to the Jan. 29 meeting. With more time to look it over in advance, Grasmick said, the mistakes could have been caught with time to spare.
“It all happened within, I don’t know, maybe an hour and a half. We had no time to look at it before the meeting to do any kind of analysis of what they had done,” said Grasmick.
Library representatives made people aware of the shortfalls in the budget as written by posting on the website and Randolph’s Front Porch Forum, and brought it up at an informational Selectboard meeting on Feb. 23.
Several community members also spoke up at Town Meeting on Saturday, Feb. 28 to explain why the budget was problematic.
The budget, voted by ballot last Tuesday, failed with 451 votes in favor of it and 507 votes against it.
“It’s because the will of the people was to see an increase over the budget, not a decrease,” Grasmick said, referring to the No vote.
Now, the library must request a special meeting to remedy the budget. At this meeting, likely no sooner than April, the library board would present a new budget and the Selectboard would discuss it, said Tyler.
Once the Selectboard approves a revised budget proposal, it would schedule a vote by Australian ballot on this item alone.
There is time. The current fiscal year ends June 30, so the budget being voted on does not go into effect until July 1.