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Date: 3/18/2021
LONGMEADOW – Longmeadow Town Manager Lyn Simmons found herself in the position of defending her choice to add new personnel to the FY22 budget, including two positions at the Department of Public Works (DPW), two school custodians and a Planning and Development director/assistant town manager.
“Our group largely deemed this a budget we could support,” said Andrew Lam, of the Finance Committee. That said, Lam noted that the FY22 budget was not a level service budget and said the additional personnel called for in Simmons proposal should be “met with the greatest scrutiny. He went on to ask her if the positions, specifically the Planning & Development director/assistant town manager, were a need or a want.
Simmons responded that she does not take the new positions lightly, considering that full-time employees come with benefits for which the town must pay.
“I feel very strongly that this is a need for the town,” she told the Finance Committee. She spoke about the town’s master plan needing a “fresh look” and how the hazard mitigation plan and upcoming development of two large properties in town would benefit from a dedicated employee.
“A community of this size, it’s an oddity not to have one,” Simmons told the committee. She explained that over the last eight years, the state has pushed to make grant funding more available to municipalities, but there is a lot of work in going after those grants and then clearing them through the channels so the town is eligible to go after the next one.
Select Board Chair Thomas Lachiusa noted that grant writers have a specific skill set and the town is more likely to receive grants written by a professional.
Select Board Member Richard Foster later commented that he was “thrilled,” about the position and the opportunity to go after more grants. “There’s millions of dollars [in grants] out there,” the town just needs someone to pursue them, he said.
Lam asked Simmons if the grants that the town would likely receive would offset the salary cost of the position. She replied by rattling off dollar amounts of a few common grants, including up to $75,000 for municipal vulnerability funding and up to $200,000 for a Green Communities grant.
Select Board Secretary Steve Marantz added that the Northampton grant writer has more than paid for their position. “I think we should expect a reasonably good return on investment,” he opined.
In terms of the assistant town manager duties, Lachiusa said many of those were given to Paul Pasterczyk, the retiring Finance Director, and with him gone, the duties would put too much on Simmons.
Armand Wray of the Finance Committee told Simmons that he had been one of the committee members with concerns. “If you heard that I was against it, you’ve turned me around,” he said.
Moving to another concern, Lam said that the Finance Committee wanted to make sure that any new federal coronavirus relief aid is used to reduce the amount that the town would have to raise and appropriate through taxes.
Pasterczyk noted that money from the first round of aid packages were required to be used for unfunded coronavirus prevention measures and could not supplant general budget items.
Thomas Mazza, Longmeadow Schools assistant superintendent for Finance and Operation, said that the School Committee wants to be sure there is enough funding to address COVID-19-safe learning and the current budget does not provide for that. The grant funding would be used to fill COVID-related gaps in the budget.
“We’re going to do our best to make the budget work for the School Department,” Mazza said.
Finance Committee Member Maury Garrett asked if the school budget and the grant funding amount would be combined as a baseline budget for FY23. Mazza told him that the budget submitted to the town manager was based on pre-pandemic needs and will continue to do so in the future. Pasterczyk added that the budget and the grants are classified separately from a financial standpoint.
Talk then turned to the capital budget. Tom Dignazio asked how cutting funding will push back projects. Pasterczyk explained that the town’s policy is to add a quarter percent each year to the capital planning fund if it is affordable. He also noted that the capital planning committee had presented a list of priority projects that would mostly keep to the $2 million limit Pasterczyk had set. To do so, the committee cut the amount of funding for sidewalk repair.
Foster opposed cutting the sidewalk money. “To me, this year, we’ve taken a step backwards,” he said.
There were several questions on other topics, such as if the town counsel receives health insurance through the town – he does not – and why the town was spending $124,000 on radios when commercial apps cost less than $10 per month for two-way radio functionality on a standard cell phone.
The radios would allow school personnel, the DPW, the fire department and police to be in contact on the same system in emergency situations. Fire Chief John Dearborn explained that while the town had considered mobile phone apps, they were cumbersome and would require installation on private devices. Instead, he said, the town-owned infrastructure that was used for emergency services before the switch to WestCOMM dispatch could be repurposed. The upgrade also does not come with many recurring costs and is therefore sustainable, he said.
Mazza spoke in favor of the radios, saying “they are an important role in safety emergencies. He noted the long-term cost is actually less expensive than the subscription to an app would be for the number of people using the system.
The final topic was whether sacrificing the operational stabilization account deposit of $250,000 would be standard, despite the recently established policy of making deposits yearly. Paterczyk stressed that it is an assumption that the budget will contain the stabilization money, but that creating the budget is not easy and trade-offs have to be made. He also noted that the stabilization and reserve account balances are “at near-record levels” and therefore he does not think the choice will negatively impact the town’s credit rating.