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Date: 5/16/2023
BELCHERTOWN — All the articles presented at Town Meeting on May 8 were approved by the approximately 220 voters who attended.
This was also the first Town Meeting with electronic voting.
The most discussed articles at Town Meeting were Article 8 and 11.
Article 8 dealt with the budget and each item was broken down by department and had to be voted on separately.
Those departments included general government, public safety, public schools, DPW — highways, sanitation and environmental, human services, culture and recreation, DPW buildings and grounds, pensions and insurance, unclassified accounts and interest and maturing debt.
The total budget of all departments is approximately $57 million which is a dollar increase change of $2.7 million or 5% percent increase change from FY23.
The school budget takes up 59% of the overall town budget and with Pathfinder Vocational Technical High School included, the schools FY24 budget is approximately $34 million which is a 4.7% change from FY23.
Before the motions were made for each department, Select Board member Ed Boscher made a recommendation for the voters to vote no on all the budget items to give the Finance Committee, Select Board and others more time to construct the budget.
He said, “I recommend we vote no on the budget items themselves. That would give [the Select Board, Finance Committee, town administrator and town accountant] a couple more weeks to take if off and perhaps look for 1% reduction in the budget. That would put us on a glide path for approximately four years to solve the problem as opposed to passing the budget tonight and passing the stress of the budget to the new town administrator.”
He added, “If you vote yes on these upcoming budget articles, that would signal to me that this Town Meeting is open to the idea of a [Proposition] 2½ override because the structural deficit, we are pretty much at the end.”
Some voters expressed that they were confused as to if they were voting for a Proposition 2½ override or to approve the budget items.
Select Board Chair Jim Barry wanted to assure residents that all options were considered when dealing with the deficit.
“What it means is our expenses go up and up and up every year and our revenue go up a little bit but our expenses could very well be more than 2.5%. We tried to keep the services we have, keep the employees we did, keeps the schools open, keep the Police Department open, keep plowing the roads and use whatever resources we have whether its ARPA money, free cash or one time funds and close the deficit, get a balanced budget and everyone worked their butts off, made some hard choices,” Barry said.
The Select Board alloacted $200,000 from ARPA funds to be used toward the FY24 budget.
Barry added that the Proposition 2½ override and structural deficit must be addressed but “not tonight.”
Town Accountant Jill Rossi thought the budget was constructed as well as it could have been and did not want to potentially have another Town Meeting if the budgets was voted down.
She said, “Hours and hours and hours were spent on this budget to make it balanced. I want to mention that this is not like a [Proposition] 2½ override. Your taxes are not going to go up because of this budget. I want to be clear about that because that is an emotional flashpoint. We did not cut services to this community in our budget.”
Boscher presented Town Meeting with some facts including the $1.8 million structural deficit and decreasing stabilization fund.
He said, “Our stabilization fund has decreased from $2.5 million in 2019 to $1.5 million as of today. As a frame of reference, Belchertown now ranks roughly 300 out of 351 communities across the commonwealth when it comes to stabilization as a percentage of the operating fund.”
The Stabilization Fund total is approximately $1.7 million.
According to the Finance Committee Chair Lauire Shea, a healthy stabilization/reserve fund should have between 3 to 5% of the town’s total operating expenses.
She added, “On an approximately $54.5 million annual budget, the Stabilization Fund should be between $1.6 million and $2.7 million. The town will need to prioritize revenues and other sources, including free cash, to focus on maintaining the Stabilization Fund.”
The budget also included a total of approximately $1.5 million of free cash — funds that were approved in the prior year operating budget that were not expended.
Excess funds are required to be certified by the state and then are available for use in the next year for operating or capital expenses or retain in reserves like stabilization.
Of the approximately $1.5 million, $1.3 million was used to balance the FY24 operating budget with the reaming $200,000 going to the town’s Stabilization Fund.
Boscher continued, “We still have no written capital fund plan to address the buildings or any other capital items. Free cash this year was $1.5 million and has been hovering between $500,000 and $700,000. To put it bluntly, we got really lucky this year in terms of balancing this year’s budget. Some items to consider, we have approximately six firefighters that are being paid for via grant this year and next year. When those go online for our regular budget, that is going to be incredibly expensive.”
The Select Board, Finance Committee and School Department met over five times in the past few months to construct the FY24 town budget.
The FY24 budget did not include a contribution to the other post-retirement employment benefits account.
As of June 2022, the long-term debt is estimated at over $43 million with the annual benefit cost totaling approximately $2 million.
According to Shea, advisors of the benefit plan recommend an annual contribution of $220,000 above the annual cost to work toward funding the obligation.
The Finance Committee recommended funding the liability beginning in FY18 but there were no contributions in FY21 or FY22 because of budget constraints during the pandemic.
In FY23 there was a $47,000 contribution and total contributions and earnings as of March 2023 are approximately $194,355.
Shea said, “This liability will continue to put pressure on the current operations through funding retirement payments if we do not commit to an annual funding solution.”
After almost an hour of discussing and approving each departments budgets, Town Meeting then discussed Article 11 which looked to work on transitioning the town administrator position to a town manager.
Barry said that more municipalities have been switching to a town manager to give the position more day to day responsibilities and would like to see Belchertown adopt a town manager so the Select Board can focus on long-term goals and solutions for the town.
Boscher jokingly added, “This be one of those occasions where Jim and I agree on something.”
Terry Nagel, who served on the search committee charged with recommending candidates for the next town administrator, looked to make an amendment to the article that would limit the flexibility afforded to the Select Board during the hiring process.
The amendment read, “Whenever the office becomes vacant, the moderator shall appoint a five member search committee to seek out and review candidates for this position and make recommendations to the Select Board from which the board will make the final decision and appointment of the individual to fill the position. In the event the Select Board does not choose to appoint a candidate from the first group presented by the Search Committee, the committee will make successive recommendations to the board until the pool of qualified candidates is exhausted.”
The town moderator constructed a five member search committee to help Community Paradigm associates find candidates for town administrator.
After a few months of screening and interviewing, the committee presented the Select Board with three candidates who the board interviewed on April 25.
During a discussion about the candidates on May 1, Select Board members agreed they did not have a perfect candidate and Select Board member Ron Aponte brought up the idea of appointing DPW Director Steve Williams.
At its May 1 Select Board meeting, the board interviewed Williams who applied for the town administrator position but was never interviewed by the search committee.
The Select Board ended up appointing Williams to become the next town administrator.
Elizabeth Vaughan was also on the search committee and expressed her displeasure with the process.
She said, “I want to speak in support of Terry’s amendment. I think it sets a precedent of accountability and a following of the system that is in place so that a Select Board can’t just throw out the recommended qualified candidates and choose someone that is based on familiarity and friendship as opposed to qualifications.”
Aponte countered the statement, raising his voice and stating, “The previous speakers’ comments are so inappropriate that I cannot believe it. To insinuate that Steve Williams was appointed by 5-0 vote by the Select Board because we are familiar with him, not because he is qualified, I am offended by that, I am sure the board is offended by it and I hope Town Meeting is offended by it.”
The amendment did not pass, but the article did.
The Select Board will now work with the Massachusetts General Court and state Legislature in Boston to pass a law to hire a town manager.