The city’s Board of Finance unanimously endorsed a $170.8 million municipal spending plan that would freeze property taxes this year.
Given the tough economy, “it would have been unconscionable” to hike taxes, Finance Chairman Rich Miecznikowski said.
The budget approved by fiscal overseers Tuesday cuts overall spending slightly while delivering a $1.4 million increase to schools, which amounts to 1.4 percent more money than education got this year.
The new budget won’t be final until it is given a stamp of approval at a joint session of the City Council and finance board on June 4. If state or federal aid figures change in the meantime, the numbers could be adjusted, officials said.
Perhaps the most unusual thing in the finance panel’s budget is that it’s not balanced. Revenues don’t match expenditures, which is an accounting no-no.
The $342,000 in spending that exceeds revenue will have to be sliced away before the final budget is approved, officials said.
To do it, Mayor Art Ward said, the unions representing city workers will have to make concessions on existing contracts or else he’ll have to lay off some employees.
The exact dollar figure “is not set in stone,” Comptroller Glenn Klocko said, but the necessity of reducing spending is clear.
Miecznikowski said officials faced challenges in paring the budget for the fiscal year that starts July 1, including rising costs and sinking revenues.
State aid in particular is stagnant at best, but the city is also seeing fewer building permit fees, lower interest earnings and less money from the conveyance tax on property sales.
To hold down spending, officials delayed bonding, put off equipment buys, slashed road paving, lowered the contingency account that’s tapped for unexpected needs each year and much more.
City leaders have been working on the budget for months, with the aim of delivering a budget that froze property taxes if at all possible.
“It’s been a long grind and there’s been a lot of sacrifice all the way around,” Ward said.
Fact Box
Proposed spending: $170.8 million
Education share: $102.3 million
City share: $67.7 million
Proposed mill rate: 25.99
Final adoption: June 4
To complete the budget with a property tax freeze included, finance officials agreed to raid Bristol’s rainy day fund to snatch $2.5 million that had been socked away for emergencies.
Mayor Art Ward and Comptroller Glenn Klocko said the economic crisis is reason enough to use a small portion of the undesignated reserve fund to help close this year’s budget gap.
Klocko said that he also reached into a number of funds – special accounts created to pay for equipment and other anticipated needs – to find even more excess cash.
All of it together helped make it possible for the city to maintain services and at least most of its jobs for another year without clobbering taxpayers.
But what’s going to happen a year from now?
Klocko said that he’s not sure how the city will pull it off without the excess money to use.
Officials said they hope that the troubled economy will pull out of its funk before they have to deal with problem.
The most recent budget proposal at City Hall calls for laying off at least 30 municipal workers unless union concessions allow for $1.8 million in savings.
“That’s the scenario right now,” Finance Chairman Rich Miecznikowski said Thursday.
If the city’s unions don’t cut a deal in the coming weeks, Comptroller Glenn Klocko said “the final alternative would be to lay people off.”
Negotiations between the city and its union employees are slated to begin in about a week and a half, Personnel Director Diane Ferguson said.
Ferguson said she hopes all the municipal unions will participate – which apparently is not a sure thing – and that both sides will consider seriously ways to save money.
Among the possibilities are furloughs, wage freezes and closing City Hall on some days.
Mayra Sampson, who heads the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Workers’ local inside City Hall, said her union “is always willing to sit down and listen” but can’t promise that it will agree to any changes in the contract.
Sampson said the union will, however, “show ways the city could save money.”
In addition to the possible layoffs in city government, it looks as if there will be some layoffs at the Board of Education as well.
Proposed cuts in its requested budget would leave the schools short nearly $2 million in their bid to maintain existing services and staff. Klocko said that layoffs will probably follow there, too.
School Superintendent Philip Streifer could not be reached Thursday.
In a nutshell, the budget request from the city departments and educators required about $180 million for the fiscal year that starts July 1. That’s more than $8 million more than the city anticipates it will have if it freezes property taxes, as politicians and fiscal overseers appear determined to do.
To cover the gap, Klocko proposed cutting the education increase by nearly $2 million, saving $500,000 by leaving open positions unfilled, paring public works by $1.4 million, tapping reserves for $2.5 million and squeezing $1.8 million more through concessions or layoffs.
The choices are tough, he said, because “there’s no more lollipops on the trees. All the places we rat-holed money are gone.”
If the city doesn’t make layoffs, squeeze concessions from the unions or find some other way to save $1.8 million, property taxes would rise .39 mills, or about $40 annually on the average Bristol home.
Mayor Art Ward said he’s “striving for 0 percent” because he doesn’t want to shove property taxes higher for hard-pressed residents.
Faced with the $1.8 million gap this week, Ward told Ferguson “to review other options,” including concessions from the unions or possibly layoffs.
Ferguson said that the unions are under no obligation to talk about settled contracts.
Having just won relatively small raises that also required higher medical co-pays, at least some employees don’t want to agree to wage freezes that would essentially reduce their pay to last year’s level while forcing them to cough up more for healthcare.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean that union members won’t back efforts to save money in order to prevent layoffs.
The last time the city laid off employees to save money during a fiscal crisis came more than 15 years ago when more than 50 workers were trimmed during a recession. The biggest hit at the time was absorbed by public works and parks, who lost many ‘outside’ workers.
Assuming city councilors agree to a proposed ordinance change, Bristol’s budget will be set at a joint meeting of the City Council and Board of Finance on June 4.
Until then, officials are still hoping for help from Hartford, Washington or the economy.
As it is, “we’re standing alone in the raft,” Miecznikowski said.
The powerful nine-member panel that oversees city spending asked last month for Bristol’s department heads to detail what they’d do if ordered to slice spending by 5 or 10 percent.
But Ward told the supervisors to hold off on the scenarios because he wanted to “avoid a chaotic and panic situation” within city government if it isn’t necessary.
That didn’t sit well with at least some finance commissioners.
“It’s our budget process,” said Ron Messier, a veteran finance board member.
“The mayor doesn’t own the budget process. The Board of Finance owns the budget process,” Messier said.
But Ward produced a memorandum Wednesday from Richard Lacey, a city lawyer, that said finance commissioners have “have a duty to make detailed inquiries” about expenditures and budget proposals, but cannot “direct a department head to make a presentation to the board within present budgetary guidelines.”
Lacey said the mayor can require supervisors to take action, but not the finance board.
Ward said he’s not ready to do that. He’s already asked them to keep their proposed increases close to zero, he said, and he doesn’t want to cause problems for department chiefs who are already straining to cope with tough times.
“I gather you’re not really interested in having our support,” Moylan told the mayor during a budget hearing Wednesday at the library.
Moylan said the finance board needs “to look at the city as a whole” as it works out this year’s city spending plan instead of simply issuing an edict that everyone has to freeze spending, including the Board of Education.
“We need to look at some of the other departments as well as education,” Moylan said, because it may make more sense to slice purchases or programs elsewhere rather than hammering the schools to save money.
Holding the line on school spending would likely mean layoffs of some untenured teachers and staff and perhaps pare programs such as music, officials have said.
“I don’t think that we can cut the Board of Education’s budget that much,” Moylan said.
Ward said the schools are a separate entity and responsible for preparing their own budget. He said, though, that Superintendent Philip Streifer is working closely with him and the finance board.
Moylan called it “mind-boggling” that the school budget can lay out the consequences of major budget cuts, but there’s no way to do the same on the city side without the mayor giving the order.
Cheryl Thibault, another finance board member, said that the impact statements about cuts in other departments would allow decision-makers to know their options.
Without them, she said, “We don’t have the tools in front of us” to make choices.
“We need to do away with the word ‘chaos,’” Messier said. “There might be trauma,” but not chaos.
But given the hard times facing most taxpayers, he said, there’s no reason city employees should be spared the worry that everyone else shares.
Finance Chairman Rich Miecznikowski said the fiscal overseers can push the issue with the mayor.
“Obviously, you people are in favor of this. We can do this,” Miecznikowki told the board Tuesday.
Wednesday, Miecznikowski said the key to resolving the impasse is to avoid bickering and for finance commissioners to ask nicely for whatever they want.
“The mayor will work with us,” he said.
But it’s not clear that Ward will require the impact statements sought by the finance panel.
“At this point in time, I don’t feel the department heads should be made to resubmit their budgets,” Ward said.
A showdown is shaping up between the city’s Board of Finance and Mayor Art Ward.
The powerful nine-member panel that oversees city spending asked last month for Bristol’s department heads to detail what they’d do if ordered to slice spending by 5 or 10 percent.
But Ward told the supervisors to hold off on the scenarios because he wanted to “avoid a chaotic and panic situation” within city government if it isn’t necessary.
That didn’t sit well with at least some finance commissioners.
“It’s our budget process,” said Ron Messier, a veteran finance board member.
“The mayor doesn’t own the budget process. The Board of Finance owns the budget process,” Messier said.
Janet Moylan, another finance commissioner, said the finance board needs “to look at the city as a whole” as it works out this year’s city spending plan instead of simply issuing an edict that everyone has to freeze spending, including the Board of Education.
“We need to look at some of the other departments as well as education,” Moylan said, because it may make more sense to slice purchases or programs elsewhere rather than hammering the schools to save money.
Holding the line on school spending would likely mean layoffs of some untenured teachers and staff and perhaps pare programs such as music, officials have said.
“I don’t think that we can cut the Board of Education’s budget that much,” Moylan said.
Cheryl Thibault, another finance board member, said that the impact statements about cuts in other departments would allow decision-makers to know their options.
Without them, she said, “We don’t have the tools in front of us” to make choices.
“We need to do away with the word ‘chaos,’” Messier said. “There might be trauma,” but not chaos.
But given the hard times facing most taxpayers, he said, there’s no reason city employees should be spared the worry that everyone else shares.
Finance Chairman Rich Miecznikowski said the fiscal overseers can push the issue with the mayor.
“Obviously, you people are in favor of this. We can do this,” Miecznikowki told the board Tuesday night.
Ward is said to be ready to defend his position, but the finance board is increasingly angry that its edict was simply tossed aside by the mayor.
A budget hearing at 6 p.m. at the library tonight will be the first chance for a showdown to take place.
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For the first time in many years, the city’s Board of Finance is tapping the rainy day fund to help hold property taxes down.
“We never touch that money,” said Finance Chairman Rich Miecznikowski. “We only use it for a unique opportunity or an emergency.”
“I consider this an emergency, he said. “Towns are drowning in this economy and we want to help the taxpayers swim.”
The city’s rainy day account – technically called its undesignated reserves – amounts to $17.9 million. That’s 10.5 percent of its annual budget, a healthy excess that few municipalities can match.
But the finance panel agreed to lower its threshold for the fund to 9 percent of the budget, freeing up $2.5 million for a special fund that can be tapped to pay for equipment and projects that would otherwise fall by the wayside.
City Comptroller Glenn Klocko said the money in the new sinking fund won’t be used for operational costs.
Klocko said that tapping the rainy day money for normal expenditures that are part of the annual spending plan would create a hole in the following year’s budget because there would no longer be reserves to use.
Using it for operational costs “would only exacerbate the problem” in subsequent years, Klocko said.
But relying on the excess to fund capital items – equipment and projects – would not have the same impact, Klocko said.
For example, Mayor Art Ward and Klocko have both said it is unlikely the city will pay for new police cruisers in the coming year because it is clamping down on spending
But it is possible the city might use money from the new sinking fund to pay for cars so that it can continue the normal replacement of aging cars.
The new fund “offers a way to pay for some items” that would otherwise have to be put off, Klocko said.
Miecznikowski said that using the excess reserves “is a first” in his long experience on the Board of Finance.
Financial experts urge towns and cities to put aside cash equal to between 5 and 10 percent of their annual spending in order to cover unusual opportunities or to help weather a crisis.
Bristol has chosen to remain on the flush end of the scale for many years in order to preserve is sold financial standing.
“Bristol is in an unparalleled position” because of its healthy rainy day fund, Klocko said, which gives officials options for dealing with the fiscal pinch that every municipality is facing because of the recession.
