A public hearing Monday (March 23) on the City of Ansonia’s 2015 – 2016 budget should have been called a public officials’ hearing.
Five people unhappy about aspects of the proposed spending plan delivered by the tax board last month offered testimony to the city’s Aldermen. All of them serve the city in some official capacity.
The Aldermen have an April 30 deadline to finalize a budget for the next fiscal year.
So Far
The Aldermen are working on a tentative budget delivered to them last month by the Board of Apportionment and Taxation.
The BOAT spending plan trimmed roughly $30,000 from a budget proposed by Mayor David Cassetti to arrive at a bottom line of $62,395,000.
If Aldermen approve BOAT’s recommendations, the city’s mill rate would decrease by 1.09, or 2.82 percent.
That means for a house assessed at $200,000, property taxes would decrease $218, from $7,722 to $7,504.
The tax rate would go down even though spending is increasing because the budget would take $2 million from what city officials said is an unnecessarily bloated fund balance and count it as income.
Article continues after summary of BOAT’s budget.
Town Clerk: Why Is My Office The Only One To Lose Staff?
Town/City Clerk Elizabeth Lynch was the first to speak at Monday’s hearing, recalling how Aldermen changed the setup of her office to pay her a flat salary shortly after Republicans took over city government in the November 2013 election.
Prior to Lynch’s election, the city paid its clerks with a small salary and allowed them to take home a portion of the fees collected by the office.
The Aldermen set the salary for the position at $72,000, but Lynch noted that they didn’t include a provision for an annual increase.
That, Lynch said, gives her “the unwanted distinction of being the only person out of over 400 full-time and part-time, non-union and union city employees and Board of Education employees who did not receive a pay raise this year.”
Lynch asked the Aldermen’s salary committee to take up the matter.
“Additionally, the town clerk’s office is the only department within the city that was required to make a reduction in our staff,” Lynch said.
When Lynch was elected in 2013, Aldermen asked her to promote one of the office’s current employees to the assistant town clerk’s spot. Aldermen then left a position open in the office.
“We were assured that it was the beginning of a reduction of all city hall departments, but as of today we hold the distinction of being the only department to have a reduction in our staff,” Lynch told Aldermen.
Article continues after video.
Fire Chief: Cuts Discourage Volunteers
Ansonia Fire Department Chief Scott Trembley was next to the podium, and began by noting the department’s need for a new fire engine, which city officials have promised to include in the 2015 – 2016 budget.
But beyond that, Trembley said the fire department needs more money to do its job.
Mayor David Cassetti asked the city’s department heads to deliver budget requests which included a 2 percent reduction in spending, Trembley said, “and I struggled to take money out of an already inadequate budget.”
The fire department’s budget for 2014 – 2015 was $253,750. Trembley delivered a $251,450 proposal for 2015 – 2016 that Cassetti sent on to the Board of Apportionment and Taxation.
Trembley said he answered questions from the tax board during a hearing last month and felt confident they were satisfied with his answers.
“Come to find out, I read in the Valley Independent that BOAT reduced us an additional $2,000,” he said.
The fire department is one of only a handful of departments for which BOAT proposed reductions, he noted, asking Aldermen to restore the cut.
The fire chief also said the department has in the recent past often had to approach BOAT to ask for more money midyear, and that the budget should really be in the range of $275,000 or so.
“I cannot run the Fire Department on $250,000,” he said. “There’s just no way I could do it. I can’t do it safely, and it’s not fair to us.”
Trembley is a career firefighter in Fairfield and said Ansonia gets a bargain when it comes to fire protection.
The city has a volunteer fire department.
“The fire department provides thousands of hours of volunteer time. It’s skilled labor,” he said. “These guys are willing to put their lives on the line for no compensation. Not to mention the hundreds of hours of training that they have to put in.”
Cuts to funding can discourage those volunteers, he said.
He noted the cost to other towns that have professional fire departments: Easton pays $1.3 million to have only two firefighters on duty 24/7, he said. Wilton, with six firefighters, pays $1.9 million. Naugatuck, with nine firefighters, pays $3.6 million.
“If I had a structure fire right now, I guarantee you I could get 40 to 50 guys to come help,” Trembley told Aldermen. “Consider the value we that have in the fire department and support us a little more than you have done in the past.”
Article continues after video.
Ambulance, School Funding
Joan Radin, who represents the city’s Fifth Ward on the Board of Aldermen, followed Trembley by asking her fellow board members to support the purchase of a new ambulance for Ansonia Rescue Medical Services.
Radin, who is also a member of the ARMS Commission, said the new vehicle is needed.
“The ambulance they’re talking about looks beautiful from across the street, but if you get up close to it, the whole underbody is rotting,” Radin said.
“I think that we need to put this in our budget, we need this ambulance, we can’t wait another year,” she said.
Article continues after video.
Cassetti himself then rose to address the Aldermen, asking them to restore about $42,000 BOAT had cut from the school board’s budget request so the school district could pay summer school costs.
Click play on the video at the top of the story to see Cassetti’s remarks.
Unfunded Liabilities?
The mayor was followed by Bartholomew Flaherty, a former chairman of the Planning and Zoning Commission currently serving on the Economic Development Commission.
Flaherty asked about a line in the city’s annual audit that showed about $26 million in unfunded liabilities, asking whether it’s a concern.
William Nimons, the city’s comptroller, said the figure included the cost of funding pensions and insurance for some retired city employees.
The city began to address the pension shortfall last year with $550,000 from the leasing of a cell tower near Nolan Field.
Flarherty said more money from the lease should have gone toward the shortfall.
He also took issue with the city taking money from its fund balance and counting it as income to deliver a tax decrease to residents.
Article continues after video.
After Flaherty was done speaking, Alderman Charles Stowe said the city followed the recommendations of its auditors in terms of addressing the shortfall.
“I would like to see more than $500,000 go towards that unfunded liability,” Flaherty said. “That’s a huge concern.”
“And it’s been with us for many years,” Stowe, a Republican, replied, implying the Democrats who controlled city government for a decade and half prior to Cassetti’s election were the ones who dropped the ball.
Not so, Flaherty, a Democrat, said.
“I think this is one of the reasons the fund balance was so large, that was trying to cover that unfunded liability,” he said.
Republicans Disagree
If that was the case, they should have told somebody about it, Republicans said this week.
Nimons said Flaherty’s claim “came out of the blue.”
The biggest chunk of the $26 million is $11,340,000 in bonding obligations, he said. The total also includes about $3.5 million representing the city’s long-term pension obligations and about $9.3 million of “other post retirement benefits,” which Nimons said represents health insurance costs for retired employees.
“We’re going to have to address that in the next couple years,” Nimons said of the $9.3 million figure. “And that’s the big gorilla in the room.”
The $26 million total also includes about $2.5 million representing “compensated absences” for employees upon retiring.
A year-by-year recent history of the fund balance was distributed at Monday’s hearing and is posted below.
Second Ward Alderman Lorie Vaccaro headed Cassetti’s transition team after voters swept Republicans into power in November 2013.
The question of the unfunded liabilities never came up, he said, until union reps approached city officials about it in January 2014.
“It was never mentioned during the transition period,” Vaccaro said.
“The can was kicked down the road, and nobody to my knowledge ever said that before Bart brought it up last night,” Vaccaro said.
He wondered why money earmarked for the shortfall would end up in the general fund.
“Why not fund the pensions?” he said. “What were they waiting for?”
John Marini, the city’s corporation counsel, agreed.
“The proper way you pay down the unfunded liabilities is to make annual contributions,” Marini said. “The idea that they were saving money up over the course of 10 years, not making any payments, but saving it up, is absurd.”
What Next?
The Aldermen’s finance committee have further budget workshops scheduled for Wednesday (March 25) at 6 p.m. and April 6 at 6 p.m.
Vaccaro said he hopes to have a 2015 – 2016 finalized for a vote by the full Board of Aldermen vote at their regular monthly meeting April 12.
