Assistant City Comptroller Robin Manuele said Monday that the public works department budget for the last fiscal year wound up about $210,000 in the hole.
Though she called it "a potential deficit," it appears the number is pretty firm at this point.
The main reason for the shortfall was the skyrocketing price of diesel fuel and heating bills.
The department spent $187,000 beyond its budget on fuel and $86,000 extra to heat municipal buildings, both items it would have been tough to hold down much.
In addition, David Bertnagle of the comptroller's office said that flooding last spring pushed up overtime costs and used supplies that would been available for other projects. That money was not reimbursed from federal emergency aid because Bristol was not included among the approved list of Connecticut communities hammered by an April storm.
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Copyright 2007. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com
12 comments:
Ellen should have known the weather was going to be so bad that it would cause all those extra overtime and energy expenses.
I didn't realize that being a psychic was part of a coucilperson's job description.
Did ANYONE know that gas would jump a dollar a gallon in one year?
Maybe Exxon/Mobil, but certainly not anyone else.
Why was she taking $$ from one account to pay for others - not even going before the Finance Board? What is this Zoppo's show?
She can't even budget PW with a 21% increase and Ward had to do it for years on 4% - thanks to Nicastro not funding PW - Finance is not Zoppo's strong point!!!!
It doesn't take a psychic to realize that when you budget for a year you need to make provisions for rising fuel costs and other unplanned expenses.
Contingency accounts should have been part of the budget.
The rising fuel costs were not a huge surprise. We knew that the costs would be going up, we just didn't know how much - so you plan for it. This is not the first year we had severe flooding so the expectation that it would happen again would have been reasonable and could have been budgeted for.
I want to know how many costly mistakes were made in the past PW budget year.
If they need money I'm sure they can go back to where Donna and Jeff live and dig up the $54,000 they wasted there. Maybe Councilman Kevin McCauley-Zoppo should supervise this one.
Better yet, hand him the shovel.
Contingency money is part of the budget, but not part of each department's budget. And utility and fuel costs are based on the city's best estimate of what it will need. Again, each department doesn't try to guess the price on its own.
How much will this cost the taxpayers. Zoppo is Chair of the budget committee and she can't even get this right!!!!!
I thought that heating fuel costs for the schools were locked in numbers each year and couldn't go up during the budget year.
School heating bills are part of the education budget, which was also short some $260K this past fiscal year.
Get rid of the "perks" the admin. & principals get and you would save big $$$$$.
As for the fuel cost/heat, budget committee should have known, its like the prices went up yesterday.
Its called planning, future outlook, etc...Something Ellen cannot see because she is to consumed with getting her big projects lined up. Like the $56,000 mistake Ellen and Kevin did not see!
I am not taking a chance on a immature, nasty, negative person for Mayor. I off to the polls and I am voting for Ward.
I thought that PW had a locked in fuel price that couldn't go up during the fiscal year - so the fuel cost wouldn't go up unless they went over the amount of fuel (gallons) that they locked the price in for. Example: If they were in a locked in price of 2.00 per gallon for 1000 gallons that 2.00 wouldn't change for the year, but if they went over 1000 gallons the price would then go to whatever the market price was.
So, did they go over their alloted gallons or did they not have a locked in price?
I thought this was the same situation for the Board of Ed.
The city does lock in prices -- or tags onto state bids to get set prices -- but I don't know that the time periods necessarily coincide with Bristol's fiscal years.
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