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Farmington board continues budget discussions without town manager

5 mins read

FARMINGTON – Following the unanticipated departure of the town manager, the Farmington Select Board met on February 8 to review the budgets.

After an executive session and the acceptance of Christian Waller’s resignation on Monday, Feb. 6, the board directed the town’s department heads to work on their budgets and send them to the accountant, Marc Roy, for tabulation.

During the board’s previous meeting on Feb. 1, the board outlined their expectation for salary and COLA increases. Essentially, because annual raises have traditionally gone into effect on April 1, after the annual town meeting, and because the town’s fiscal year runs from January to December, the board calculated the actual budget impact for salary and COLA increases at 25% of the 2022 salary and 75% of the 2023 adjusted salaries. The remaining 25% of the 2023 salary is expected to be paid out in the first quarter of 2024 before any 2024 adjustments take effect.

The budgets presented at the meeting on Feb. 8 reflected this staggered pay increase schedule. Most of the budget decreases were these salary adjustments and the associated changes to the benefits, resulting in a reduction of about $140,000 from the initial proposed figures. In addition, the current budget would see approximately $1.3 million into reserve accounts; this is a reduction from the original proposal of $2.3 million into the reserve, with the public works budget and the fire department budgets sharing the bulk of that reduction.

In the board worksheets, the overall appropriations line has dropped from a 27.4% increase in the first proposal to a 10.4% increase. The actual property tax increase will not be finalized until the board sets the tax commitment later in the year; currently the board is working with a ‘placeholder’ figure of 5.4% property tax increase and with estimated revenues.

Accountant Marc Roy noted that many of the other boards he works with have a target goal for the unassigned fund balance and use that to help determine their expenditures, reserve accounts, and the final property tax, while Farmington has a target goal for the property tax increase and for the overall budget percentage increase, and draws from the unassigned funds to support that goal.

Currently, the unassigned fund balance is approximately $4.1 million.

The board discussed if there were one-time expenses that they could remove from the regular budget and put on the warrant as separate appropriations directly from the unassigned fund balance. They settled on two expenditures, $250,000 for a plow truck for public works, and $109,000 for two cruisers for the police department. The department is already under contract for the police cruisers. This allowed the operations budget percentage to decrease, although the expense will still be paid out of the unassigned funds if approved during the town meeting.

Looking at the total budget, Board Chair Matt Smith said that he felt it was a responsible budget. He noted that a lot of the changes were ‘nickels and dimes’ but that they were dealing with a lot of increases across the board.

Selectman Stephan Bunker expressed some concern that regardless of how they can justify the budget, the overall percentage increase may present a barrier at the town meeting.

The Farmington Select Board has met to work on the budget a total of nine times in the past month, holding an estimated 24 hours of discussions so far. The board has regular business to conduct Tuesday, Feb. 14, including two executive sessions, so they are expected to meet on Wednesday, Feb. 15 to vote on the budgets and give a recommendation to the budget committee.

The annual town meeting is currently scheduled for 7 p.m. on Monday, March 27 at the Mt. Blue High School. The elections for municipal officials will be open at the Community Center from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on the same day.

 

This meeting was recorded by Mt. Blue TV and is available for viewing online at MtBlueTV.org

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