The Bottom Line At Last: Taxes Going Up 4.46 Percent

After more than 20 hours of public deliberation spread over eight meetings and $79,000 cut, the board of finance finished its budget review Wednesday. The end result is a $74.33 million spending plan that is 3.23 percent higher than last year's total. Coupled with drops in , it will increase taxes 4.46 percent over last year.

The budget now goes to the Representative Town Meeting, which will spend four days in May working through the budget and then officially approve it. If everything stays the same, the tax rate would rise from 18.04 to 18.85 mills in July, costing the average taxpayer another $152 a year.

The 4.46 percent tax increase represents a personal failure to the taxpayer, board member J.W. “Bill” Sheehan said. His goal was to bring the percentage increase to 4 percent or less, and that attempt was not successful, Sheehan said.

The budget, which saw its largest increases in a state-mandated payment to employee retirement ($1.124 million over last year) and health insurance for employees (which increased $1.6 million in the board of education’s budget alone), represents the failed economic policies of the state and federal government, board member Brian Vachris said. The regulative policies, unfunded mandates and inability to stop spending create the increases in this budget, leaving the finance board with little to cut and taxpayers to bear the additional costs, he said.

Sheehan, meanwhile, argued about what the town could control, namely union contracts. Administration needs to negotiate salaries with lower (or no) salary increases, and health care benefits need to be readjusted, through increasing cost in co-pays and prescription drugs, he said.

“The only real way to get control of the budget is to get control of the salaries and benefits of town employees,” Sheehan said.

Nearly 80 percent of the town’s operational costs is salaries and health care, Sheehan said. Every town-side employee who has a contract is receiving at least a 2 percent raise in July, and board of education employees that have a contract (aside from administrators) will receive a 3 or 4 percent raise, according to budget documents.

Some Final Cuts

 The board of finance made an additional $6,500 in cuts Wednesday before finally approving the budget. One $5,000 cut came out of funding for SEAT buses, and an additional $1,500 came out of the Jordan Fire Department budget.

Board of Finance Chairman Ron Fedor asked for a $5,000 cut from the $42,000 SEAT allocation, which was approved by four of the remaining six board of finance members. The town gives money to SEAT through state statute, but has no ability to give make line-item adjustments within the budget, Fedor said.

If it did, the budget would never pass through the finance board, Fedor said. Nine percent of the total budget is administration, a number that is too high, and other costs, such as $5,000 for employee appreciation gifts, are too high, he said.

Secondly, the government is not responsible for this type of service, Fedor said. If the businesses make money off of the people coming to the Crystal Mall or having them work in their company, they should pay for it, he said.

“It doesn’t say to right to life, liberty and subsidized transportation,” Fedor said.

Board member George Peteros made an additional $1,500 cut to the Jordan Fire Company budget after discovering a contradiction in the fire chief’s statements.
Jordan Fire Chief Tim Sullivan, at an earlier budget hearing, said the firehouse had a residential garage door and it needs to be replaced with a commercial door.

Peteros investigated and discovered the door was a commercial door, not a residential door, he said.