On Wednesday night, the Board of Selectmen (BOS) voted 2-1 to send the Stafford Selectmen’s 2024/2025 budget of $16,579,589.50 to the Board of Finance (BOF) – and the paving budget remains intact, at least for now.
That budget reflects an increase of $1,388,819.50, or 9.14% over last year. That includes $850,000 more for paving and road work than last year. (For more details on paving, see this story or this story.) This line item accounts for the most significant increase in the budget and is, therefore, getting the most scrutiny.
Selectman Rick Hartenstein said he has been trying to talk to people about the paving budget; “I haven’t gotten any negative feedback about putting it in.” If anything, he reported, people have expressed a desire to see more money put toward the roads. With that in mind, he said he fully supported keeping the extra $850,000 in the budget.
On the other side of that debate was Selectman and State Representative Kurt Vail, who said he checked in with Woodstock—one of the towns in his district and the second largest town (by area) in the state—and found that their annual paving budget is just $375,000. Director of Public Works Devin Cowperthwaite told me there could be a number of reasons for that level of funding, most notably the overall conditions of the roads. Not only does it cost less to provide road maintenance when the roads are already in decent condition, but something as simple as having narrower roads could lead to a sizable difference in the budget needed to repair and replace a mile of road.
“I understand why we want to be able to do it,” Vail said. Ultimately, however, he added, it’s “too big of a jump for me.”
Earlier this year, First Selectman Bill Morrison presented a plan to merge the Fire Marshal’s office with the Building and Zoning Department. (For more details on that, read this story.) The plan calls for hiring two part-time people: one to support the part-time Zoning Enforcement Officer and one to support the Fire Marshal who would be pulling double duty as a building inspector. “The way we were doing business wasn’t as efficient as it could be,” said Morrison. With that in mind, he asked the Building and Zoning office to devise a plan.
Diana Rose, Human Resources Specialist, was in the audience and pointed out that part-time hires are not benefit-eligible, which ultimately saves the town money over, say, hiring one full-time person. She also noted that there were other savings to be realized as the separate departments had separate supply lines in the past but would now merge those costs.
Hartenstein said that no one had come up with a different plan, so he would support moving the plan forward. Vail said that he liked the idea of merging the two departments but was still unsure about adding two new positions. He suggested that hiring one person might be a compromise.
Morrison would like to create a budget line for Capital Improvement Projects (CIP). Typically, towns put money into a CIP fund to help pay for infrastructure and other improvements rather than having to borrow money through the bonding process, which costs more money in the long run. Stafford, however, has not historically had a CIP budget. The town’s auditors suggested creating a CIP fund, and Morrison said he thought it was important to follow their advice. Vail agreed. Funding the CIP budget adds another $50,000 to the bottom line.
If the town voted on the Selectman’s budget and the Board of Education budget as-is today, it would represent a 2.55 mill increase. For the average homeowner in town—based on the median home value—that would mean an increase of $346.91 per year (or $28.90 per month).
Vail suggested trying to cut $781,000, which he said would bring the Selectmen’s budget increase in line with the school budget increase. Morrison said he felt it was important to move the budget to the BOF because that board has a better view of the big picture. The BOF could very well “send us back to the drawing board,” as Morrison put it, but essentially, they won’t know until they try.
The BOS voted to send the budget to the BOF, with Morrison and Hartenstein in favor and Vail opposed.