Concord’s city councilors will wait until the end of the month to finalize their budget for fiscal year 2018.
But the councilors added money Monday for weekend sidewalk plowing and an unfilled position at the police department.
Councilor Dan St. Hilaire proposed that the council should hold off adopting a resolution until June 26, after state legislators wrap up their budget process, which could have an effect on the city.
“One thing I’ve learned is you can never count on what’s going to happen across the street,” he said of the State House. “I think it’s just a wise course of action.”
But before the unanimous vote to recess, Mayor Jim Bouley proposed a three-part amendment that found support with the rest of the council.
The upshot of that move – assuming the budget is adopted as is – is that the city will have additional money to plow sidewalks on weekends and fill a position called a “community service aide” in the police department.
The $39,090 set aside for weekend sidewalk plowing would offer a new service in the city, as the sidewalk plows currently operate only on weekdays.
“These dollars would allow for some of those heavily traveled sidewalks that didn’t get plowed to actually get plowed during the weekends,” Bouley said. “If it snows on a Friday, then we’d actually be able to do it on a Saturday.”
He added: “I think we’ve all probably experienced at one time or another a Saturday or Sunday where Loudon Road is extremely busy, and people are out in the road walking, because the sidewalks aren’t plowed.”
To offset the increase, the councilors decided to reduce a line in the general overhead section of the budget related to compensation adjustments. The 2017 budget was $434,920, and it was set to increase to $445,525.
That line, which according to the budget “is used to allocate funds for compensation adjustments and severance payments to retiring employees,” will be reduced to $406,435.
For the community service aide, Bouley said it’s an existing position that was slated to go unfilled in the budget proposal. He said the person doing that job would “take away some of the more menial tasks an officer would have to perform in their daily duties,” freeing up the officer to work on more pressing matters.
The additional $29,330 added to the budget for the community service aide position will be offset by an equivalent reduction through attrition, Bouley said. The $90,000 reduction proposed through attrition was increased to $119,330.
“That way we don’t raise the tax rate and it pays for itself,” the mayor said.
The third piece of this amendment will partially undo an addition made two weeks ago.
At the time, the councilors planned to bump up an $810,000 expense for the irrigation system at Beaver Meadow Golf Course from 2020 to the coming year. Bouley proposed to reduce the scope of that project to the pump house only at a cost of $145,000.
“It would be about an $8,000 debt service payment for next year, which I think is a much more reasonable cost than the $810,000. We’ll come back and we’re going to review the out years of the CIP like we always do,” Bouley said, using an acronym to reference the city’s capital improvement program, which works as a schedule for future investments.
The councilors unanimously adopted the three-part amendment.
One resident, Roy Schweiker, spoke during the public hearing. He offered suggestions for the leaf collection program, billing for water usage and the operating hours of the general services department.
There was no action taken specific to Schweiker’s recommendations.
The $61.81 million budget is estimated to represent a 3.4 percent increase to the tax rate, driven largely by debt service on past infrastructure projects.
The increase would result in a tax impact of 33 cents per $1,000 of assessed valuation, or an increase of about $83 for the owner of a $250,000 home.
The city council will reconvene to finalize the budget at 7 p.m. June 26, with the expectation that the Legislature’s budget work will be complete by then.
(Nick Reid can be reached at 369-3325, nreid@cmonitor.com or on Twitter at @NickBReid.)