A CLOSER LOOK
The Westbrook City Council Finance Committee’s first meeting is Thursday, April 9, at 6 p.m. in Room 114 at Westbrook High School. Another meeting will be held there Saturday, starting at 9 a.m., and another on Monday at 6 p.m. The final committee meeting will be on Monday, April 27, at 6 p.m., after which the budget will go to the City Council.
A part-time library employee and four crossing guards were restored in the budget Mayor Bruce Chuluda presented to the City Council Monday.
The $55.8 million budget represents a 2.9 percent increase over this year’s budget. On Thursday, the Finance Committee will begin its review of the budget.
The part-time library position was eliminated in January, when the city had to make up for a $580,000 revenue shortfall.
In addition, four crossing-guard positions that had been discussed as possibly being cut from the police department budget and a school resource officer, which was cut from the school department’s budget, were all restored by the mayor.
As proposed, the budget would raise the tax rate by 45 cents, to $15.88 per $1,000 of assessed valuation. According to City Administrator Jerre Bryant, the average Westbrook home, worth $199,400, would have a tax bill of $3,167, which is $90 more than last year.
Chuluda said city revenues are down $844,790, largely due to decreases in building permit fees and auto excise taxes.
In order to make up for the revenue hole, Chuluda asked the leaders of all municipal departments to present budgets with no increase from this year.
Chuluda said the police and fire departments managed to “hold the line,” but others were able to significantly decrease their expenses.
In the new budget, the Public Services Department would spend $113,472 less than this year. The majority of the savings comes from the layoff of three employees in January and the elimination of contracted snow removal, which Director Tom Eldridge said the department will do in-house.
Aside from delays in clearing sidewalks of snow, which the department already experienced this winter, Eldridge said it will take longer for them to repair roads and shoulders.
“We don’t have the bodies that we used to have,” Eldridge said. “It has a ripple effect.”
The Finance Department cut its budget by $58,687, and the Engineering and Code Enforcement Department by $52,461.
Though a part-time library position was restored, Chuluda said, Library Director Karen Valley cut expenses on supplies and equipment in order to come in with a budget that is about $16,000 less than this year’s.
All city employees are helping to keep spending down by agreeing to forgo their contracted 3 percent raises, effectively extending their contracts that were supposed to expire this summer, through June of next year. The City Council approved those new contracts Monday.
In addition to employees from all five of the city’s labor unions giving up their raises, the city’s 23 non-union employees agreed to the same. The agreement saves the city $203,087.
Bryant said the unions had asked for a guarantee that there would be no more layoffs in the coming year. Nine city employees were laid off in January. He said, because the economy is unpredictable, he couldn’t do that. However, the mayor did not propose to cut any positions in his budget.
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