Questioning the budget process

To the Editor;

For many years the town of Sangerville’s Select Board has appointed a budget committee to help them set the budget, thereby getting a broader community view of fiscal matters and helping ensure that the town spends only what it can afford. The budget committee meets several times and thoroughly discusses the budget, cutting or adding as they sese fit. At the end of this process they sit down with the select board and go over the proposed budget one more time to see if both groups are in agreement.

The town report clearly shows the proposed budget for the coming year alongside the budgets and actual expenditures for the two previous years. The town warrant for the annual meeting clearly states what amount of funding the budget committee recommends and what amount the select board recommends so that the residents know when the two groups disagree and can decide between the two figures or vote for some other amount entirely.

This year the select board decided to start the budgeting process before 2015 even ended. On Dec. 22, the board voted to give the town clerk, deputy town clerk, the custodian and the public works director substantial raises. When the budget committee started meeting in January, we thought that those were recommendations since the select board had no money with which to fund those raises. The committee spent most of two sessions discussing what appropriate raises would be and what the town could afford, recommending enough funding for 2 percent raises across the board.

When the budget committee met with the select board, the board was cavalier in its dismissal of a discussion on the budget. In fact, as long as the budget committee agreed to lump sum funding for the fire department and public works, the select board was happy to approve the budget committee’s recommendations, without looking at our proposal.

The town report did not have the figures for the proposed budget this year and the warrant for town meeting had the select board and the budget committee in complete agreement, never differing. With this paucity of information, the residents voted on the budget, assuming that the select board and their budget committee had agreed. The budget committee was under that impression as well.

When the first selectmen’s meeting rolled around after town meeting employee salaries were once again on the agenda. The budget committee members assumed this was to finalize the 2 percent raises that had been budgeted and the townspeople had agreed to fund. Alas, that was not so. The select board discussed their vote in December, deciding that there was no need to rescind it, and spoke briefly to their plans to finagle the budget so that they could fund these raises. Due to the setup of the budget, the public works director’s raise is easily funded, as is the maintenance worker’s, but the other two raises fall under administration and there is little extra money in that section of the budget. The raises will increase administration just under $7,000, and one employee alone will get nearly a 24 percent raise. Those numbers are astounding and no one with an ounce of fiscal sense would approve them, but our select board did.

The select board then proceeded to hide what they had done from the public. They told the budget committee they agreed with our recommendations. The column for the proposed budget was conveniently left out of the town report. They phrased the warrant so that it appeared that the budget committee and select board agreed and encouraged the budget committee to tell interested parties that a 2 percent raise was approved. Nowhere in the town report did it show the increase they were planning in administration.

Sangerville’s select board is on a power trip. They ignored the budget committee they set up to advise them, and made no effort to represent the townspeople who elected them.

Gerald A. Jackson
Budget committee member
Sangerville

Editor’s note: This letter to the editor was submitted several weeks ago but was held up due to circumstances beyond the author’s control.