Finance Board Sends $57.94M Budget Back to Selectmen

• Education: $33,733,623 
  
• General Government: $18,690,869 
  
• Debt Service: $4,569,159 
  
• Capital Projects: $944,012 
  

The board first heard public comment on the Board of Education budget. BOE Chairwoman Gail MacDonald said she was proud of the education budget "because it was built on the needs of our students." She highlighted the inclusion of all-day kindergarten, the restoration of money for sports and a middle school technology program.

See video of residents speaking at the public hearing.

MacDonald acknowledged the tough budget circumstances and asked that no matter what the finance board decided, the town come together to support the proposal.

"I just ask that whatever is put forward tonight, it's something that we all get out for and work for, because all the services are important in town," she said.
MacDonald then put in a final plug for a $48,000 expenditure the board had requested to start a pilot program for school safety in the wake of the Newtown shootings as well as a related $100,000 increase for the police budget. 

In deliberations, the board decided not to add money to the budget for either expenditure but to take expected leftover monies from the 2012-13 capital expenditures account to fund the school portion. All agreed the pilot program was worthwhile, but some members expressed reservations on moving too quickly before the town knows more about the parameters of any state mandates.

Four speakers — Planning and Zoning Commission Chairman Rob Marseglia, PZC member John Prue, former PZC Chair Charles Sneddon Jr. and EDC Commissioner and Plan of Conservation and Development Subcommittee Vice-Chair Wendy Bury urged the board to restore funding for the Director of Planning position, which has been vacant since the death last April of former director William Haase. First Selectman Ed Haberek Jr. has been overseeing the department since the fall.

Marseglia said he thought the Planning Department needed the leadership and the oversight of a professional director to help settle differences of opinion among commission members.

"As a commission, there's things we need to do as regards to planning that are not progressing the way they need to be progressing," Marseglia said. "We've got some self-identified commission initiatives, as we call them, things that we'd like to do to change and improve the regulations, and quite honestly, we're not making any headway on those, at least at a pace that seems reasonable."

Prue said he thought a full-time director was crucial to further the town's efforts to attract commercial development. 

"I think this position is needed. The department is without leadership," Prue said. "Sitting on the Planning and Zoning Commission as I have over the last two-and-a-half years, it's clear that over this past year I think we've taken steps backward and we have to start getting that department moving forward."

After their post-hearing deliberations, the members of the finance board struck a compromise and decided to restore $30,000 to fund the position in the second half of the fiscal year (starting Jan. 1) by taking the money from the Undesignated Fund Balance.

Two Mystic-Noank Library board members spoke in favor of restoring funding that was cut earlier this month for the Mystic-Noank library, including one who read a letter from the library committee at the StoneRidge retirement community in Mystic urging that funding be increased.

But in the end, the board was deadlocked on whether to increase the allotment and so were required to decline restoring it.

$20,000 was also added to the Pawcatuck Neighborhood Center's $120,000 allocation after a detailed presentation by Pawcatuck resident and PNC board member Charles Young, who chronicled the rapid rise in requests for the center's services.

"The demand has increased over recent months and years, and most definitely will increase in the coming days, weeks and months," Young said. "All of these reasons I've talked about is why additional funding is needed for the Pawcatuck Neighborhood Center, especially during these very hard times.

"The need is there and is going to be there for now and the near future."