Open Letter Re: Brattleboro Town Finances

Tuesday, March 17, 2015

Dear fellow Town Representatives:

I have been meaning to write an open letter reporting out my concerns and observations about this year’s Representative Town Meeting, items on the agenda, the budget, etc. I have left this until the last minute in hopes that others of you might finally step forward to join me in drafting a brief report as your Town Finance Committee.

This is the web site of the Finance Committee:

The site has not been updated in a year. I can’t do the work of the committee by myself, so please regard this as merely a personal letter.

Let me preface this personal letter by pointing out that the existence and role of the Finance Committee is mandated by the Town Charter. The relevant passage reads as follows:

Section 4.C. Finance Committee: The representative town meeting shall establish a finance committee for the general purpose of reviewing proposed and actual expenditures by the town, town school district, and such other budgets which affect the taxpayers of the town of Brattleboro, including Brattleboro Union High School District 6. A review will include making recommendations to the representative town meeting and the voters. The committee will work with the town finance director, school finance director, and other town officials in assessing the recommendations and impact of the proposed annual budget and all finance policy including fund balances, debt management, capital improvements and the capital plan. It is also recommended that the committee review all auditor’s reports and any other matters of financial import that impact the voters of the town. The representative town meeting shall fix and from time to time may alter the number of members, the manner of their selection, their terms of office, their compensation if any, and other duties and functions. The committee may choose its own officers. Pursuant to the rules established by representative town meeting, appointment or election of finance committee members shall be made at each annual representative town meeting.

From this passage, it can be seen that the Town Finance Committee plays an important role in our Town government, and is a crucial element in the system of checks and balances that are built into it.

So Moderator Lawrin Crispe, myself, and all others concerned are hoping that this year, more individuals than just myself will ‘step up to the plate’ and agree to help constitute, revive, and reinvigorate this crucial committee.

Transition Year

This year should be seen as a time of transition to a new managerial administration. At the same time, there is strong continuity. It is remarkable that the entire Selectboard has been re-elected without opposition. Also, Assistant Town Manager (and former 18 months’ Acting Town Manager) Patrick Moreland continues to work with the current administration. The Town Finance Department also continues under the able administration of Town Treasurer and Finance Director John O’Connor.

I have met with our new Town Manager, Peter Elwell, and am satisfied that he is embarking on a sound managerial approach to our Town’s affairs. In our meeting, he emphasized just that: a ‘nuts and bolts’ managerial approach, focusing cleanly on the areas of Town government for which he is directly responsible. That said, I am satisfied that he will also give all due attention to the ‘larger picture’, and over time will emerge as a leader and guiding light throughout Town government and civic affairs.

Overview

Seeing that the Administration is proposing a level-services budget and has found ways and means to do so with no tax increases next year, it seems to me that we should each go over the municipal budget as presented, and barring any surprises or unforeseen issues, we should pass this budget.

Connecticut River Transit

Over the past year, I have given my advice and personal counsel to key individuals within the Town government. This has dwelled on one area for which I had named responsibility otherwise: my role as the Town’s
appointed delegate to Connecticut River Transit (‘The Current’). As many of you will remember, CRT took over the administration of our bus service, the ‘Beeline’, just a few years back. This took place under terms of a Memorandum of Understanding which, I believe, still applies. As part of that agreement, Brattleboro was guaranteed a municipal representative on the CRT Board, whose By-Laws until now have required that their board be composed of a majority of such representatives. However, in the period between the departure of Barbara Sontag and my appointment, more than two years passed without Brattleboro sending anyone to assist in CRT’s governance.

The news on that front is that CRT lately decided on what was initially called a “merger”, but in fact was a decision to let itself be administratively absorbed by its neighbor organization to the west, Deerfield Valley Transit. We were told for months that this would be a merger, but in the last analysis everyone admitted it was a takeover. The Vermont Department of Transportation (VTRANS) strongly supported this change. As part of the change, in deciding the architecture of the new successor organization (which is supposed to be called Southeast Vermont Transit), there will be no municipal representation. I raised concerns about this to our Selectboard and administration, but ultimately they decided to accept the changes despite the fact that Brattleboro will no longer have any direct say in the policies and practices of the largely State-subsidized mass transit agency which serves our area. Brattleboro will, however, so far as I know, maintain its annual contribution to the budget of our bus provider, which until now has continued at the rate of $50,000 per annum.

The Police / Fire Renovations Project

I have watched the process of the Police / Fire Renovations Project unfold with great interest, as did the previous Finance Committee members, almost all of whom are still part of Representative Town Meeting. You will find many references to our work in this regard on the Finance Committee’s web site.

I have attended scores of meetings during the former Committee’s work, and even since then, have devoted personal time attending meetings to discuss and determine the direction of the Police / Fire project. After last year’s budget defeat, I was not alone in saying that this defeat should absolutely not be read as a referendum on the project, however many of us took it as such. Accordingly, late last Spring the Selectboard re-submitted a revised budget which, by tying up its purse-strings, effectively stalled the project while the Town considers its options in that regard. This year as well, the Selectboard does not propose to move the project into ‘full-phase’ – the proposed new budget once again does not anticipate taking out the second bond which would permit its completion. As you know, the options lately proposed include the ‘new and different’ idea of relocating the Police section of the project away from the Municipal Center, an idea which, per the State’s Bond Counsel, would require that the entire project be re-submitted to Representative Town Meeting for our approval.

I have gone on record as strongly supporting this project as originally formulated ($14.1 million) though I did have some concerns about the cost. I figured that in the execution of it, the costs could be brought down, and last year, there were indications that indeed this might happen. Under the tutelage of, and at the request of, a vigilant Selectboard, proposals were made that would have cut its cost to approximately $11 million (by then-current estimates). My own counsel to the Selectboard and to the project oversight committee at the time was that I felt if the changes to the West Brattleboro Fire Station could be deferred or minimized to those essential, the project, with the other proposed changes and reductions, might be completed for around $10 million. This was, of course, in the wake of the Selectboard having decided that the designed ‘emergency response center’ portion of the project should be moved from West Brattleboro to the main Fire station, making (in my opinion) the case for major renovations in West Brattleboro very much altered.

We are now at a point with this project where we should give our new Town Manager considerable say. He has the capacity to look at things freshly, and – I believe – to come up with a win-win approach for all concerned. I don’t know why these badly needed changes to our first responders’ facilities have garnered such vocal opposition, but I believe we in Representative Town Meeting still support the Police / Fire project – our last
vote on it, in late 2012, approved it by about a 3-1 ratio, as you will recall. My own personal recommendation is that the Town should proceed with the project – with appropriate changes and alterations to reduce cost — without any further delay.

‘Your mileage may vary’, as they say. But let me point out that there are also costs associated with delaying the project, as we have for the past year. In doing so we have extended the project’s life by a year’s time, effectively changing the scope and cost of the job for both project management and the Town administration. We well know the ‘surface’ estimated costs of this project, but we are less familiar, I think, with the ‘sunk costs’ – time, energy, and resources spent on it by Town officials over many years’ time now.

Human Services

The amount budgeted each year by the Town for support of our very important human services non-profits at times in the past has, if I recall correctly, been near the $200,000 mark. Each year, a number of us come to Representative Town Meeting primed to plead for support of one agency or another, not only through this Human Services budget but also by granting exemptions from property taxes for this, that, or the other institution whose missions we see as of surpassing importance. This year, we see a proposed increase in the Human Services budget of $10,000, from $130,765 to $140,765.

I expect considerable opposition to this idea, but I have an alternate proposal that I think we should consider over the longer term. I believe that the Town should participate in the establishment of a charitable municipal or community foundation to support the human services non-profits that we now support with direct contributions. One reason to do this is that we should guard the boundaries between the public, private, and charitable sectors; this is one of the ways in which we ensure the continuation of our democracy. I believe that the Town should help establish such a foundation with annual taxpayer contributions beginning at the current scale, and scaling Town contributions down over time as individual and charitable contributions to the foundation increasingly make up the difference. My own background in fund raising informs me that this is eminently feasible; the last capital campaign I ran was the $800,000 major gifts portion of the campaign for the Community Kitchen in Keene, NH. The way things are now, a Town Meeting where we should be able to concentrate on municipal public sector expenditures and planning has to change its stride, so to speak, in major ways to allow for our consideration of charitable missions and organizations. Ultimately I believe it will be more economical in all respects if a municipal or community foundation does this work for us, and it will present us with a priceless opportunity for much greater clarity in considering our public-sector municipal expenses.

Let me close this topic by asking the provocative question, is it fair to our taxpayers for Representative Town Meeting to, in effect, presume their charitable intent toward the broad gamut of non-profit organizations that we now support with direct, tax-funded contributions? You be the judge. But I would submit that the ‘urgency’ portion of their collective case for support falters somewhat when we observe that the First Baptist Church still has trouble coming up with adequate funds to heat their building during the cold months, when it serves the entire community as our ‘overflow homeless shelter’.

“PILOT”

… stands for ‘payments in lieu of taxes’, which as a phrase is a legal non-starter, because any stance which presumes that charitable non-profits have any tax obligation will probably ultimately be defeated in the courts on Constitutional grounds. However, the Town has, over time negotiated – and sometime sued in court or through legal channels for – payments from major non-profits toward the cost of municipal services. I would submit that these organizations’ missions remain charitable in nature, and that MEDIATING such outcomes as the amounts of their contributions to the Town budget, rather than giving it to the lawyers to fight over (and thereby incurring unnecessary legal costs), is a much more seemly option. So this year, I recommend that the Town move, as much as possible, away from any legally adversarial means to achieve such results.

Schools

You may have noticed that the Town Finance Committee has, as part of its obligations, commenting and making recommendations on school budgets, both the Town elementary schools and the BUHS ones. In the past, my commenting on these budgets has been questioned by one or two other Finance Committee members on the basis that my sole working livelihood over the past three-and-a-half years has been as a substitute teacher (not only in Brattleboro, but throughout WSESU). So even though it is a sporadic and extremely modest livelihood at best, their concern is duly noted, and I will refuse to comment on the school budgets at this time, except to give you my personal opinion that public education is not only a cornerstone of our democracy (as State Senator Jeanette White stated earlier today), but is at the very forefront of civilization itself. We need others to step forward for work in the Finance Committee, as you know, and when this happens, it will help balance out any subsequent observations and recommendations which we may make to you periodically about our public education system (and other areas as well).

This is just about all I have to say going forward, and I relish seeing you all at Representative Town Meeting on Saturday and hearing what you have to say. And I know that many of you, as Town Reps do, are very much looking forward to saying it!

John Wilmerding, Second District

Town Finance Committee appointee 2014-15

Town Finance Committee 2011-14

802-254-2826 home

802-257-3367 cell & text

wilmerding@myfairpoint.net