I’m pleased that the Select Board has decided to have a large public forum about the Fiscal Year 2009 budget, rather than a special Town Meeting. The rules of our form of government do not give budget-development responsibilities to Town Meeting, nor is convening its members a particularly good way to gauge public opinion. The most important question the people developing budgets must grapple with is whether to live within the predictable constraints of our current revenues or whether to seek, and campaign for, a Proposition 2 1/2 override. Town Meeting members, if past history is any guide, are generally more likely to support bigger budgets and an override than are the voters as a whole.
Unfortunately, I am not able to attend the budget meeting, scheduled for Monday, February 11. However, I have been able to go to the town’s web site and review an amazing amount of information, presented in well-organized and reasonably-sized PDF files. I suggest that you, too, if you have high speed internet access, go to the web site and download as many of them as interest you. There are different files for each department, so most files are less than 500 kilobytes; the Appendices, which is the biggest one I got, is slightly over 1 megabyte. I commend Town Manager Larry Shaffer, Finance Director John Musante and the staff involved in presenting all this information so clearly for the public.
I only wish I could find comparable information on the web for the other major budget areas: schools and the library. To be fair, the library and school committees have had meetings about their budgets. But we can’t all attend every meeting. Having the information in a form we can get from our homes is very helpful.
The Amherst Town Government Act requires the Town Manager to submit a budget in mid-January every year. That budget covers those things that the Town Manager administers – police, fire, public works, planning, conservation, inspections, leisure services, utilities, etc. However, all sources of income – revenue – are listed on the web site.
The Finance Committee reviews the Manager’s proposal, and the separate proposals from the library and schools, to develop an overall budget that will be presented to Annual Town Meeting in April or May. The Select Board, in the meantime, decides whether to support what the Manager has proposed or to reduce or add to various parts. It’s a complicated process, with a lot of parts moving simultaneously.
Unfortunately, we have very few real choices. Increases in the costs of health insurance and utilities are gobbling up any increases in revenue. Health insurance alone will rise by over $400,000; total revenues are expected to increase by less than $800,000. So we have to choose what to cut. Shaffer is recommending closing War Memorial Pool and eliminating taxpayer-funded support for human service agencies, along with some reallocation of costs, reorganization of departments, and some increased revenue from fees and the agreements with UMass and neighboring towns. He has a prioritized ist of things he would like to add or restore from previous cuts - including two police officers and a new economic development staffer – if additional funds do somehow become available.
Overall, I agree with Shaffer’s proposal. Recreation is a legitimate service for local governments to provide, but after years of trimming, we cannot continue in a “there’s always next year” mode. We have to define what our essential services are and make sure those are paid for first.
Until or unless towns and cities in Massachusetts are given more revenue sources, we are stuck. My major concern about the budget is that we may still be in denial: we have no plan for coming years except more of the same. All of us need to think about what is essential, and how to pay for it. Some commentators in the Bulletin are very dismissive of economic development, but have offered no suggestions for either increasing our resources or eliminating services. According to an Appendix of the budget, in FY99, commercial property was almost 11 percent of the property valuation in town; in FY08, it was down to just below 7 percent. That isn’t helping any of us.