The Bethlehem Town Board started getting into the nuts and bolts of the 2012 budget at a workshop on Thursday, Sept. 15, and at the end of a three-hour session it was clear there are will be major challenges to overcome in this budget cycle.
A draft budget has already been presented by Supervisor Sam Messina and town staff that would hike taxes by 1.27 percent, raise sewer and water rates and include no raises or “step” increases in pay for years on the job for town employees. At the same time, spending and services would remain about flat.
On Thursday, department heads from the Police Department, Parks and Recreation, Department of Public Works and the Highway Department took questions from the board on their budgets. Pretty much across the board, it was clear rising pension and health insurance costs as well as the town’s aging infrastructure have put leaders in an unenviable position.
Deputy Commissioner of Public Works Erik Deyoe explained that with the town’s roughly $500 million worth of water and sewer assets, it should be putting $10 million per year into maintenance and replacement. That hasn’t been done.
“We’ve really trimmed the fat from the water and sewer funds,” Deyoe said. “We need to be cognizant of that as we look at 70- and 80-year-old infrastructure.”
The biggest projects on the draft budget are improvements to some of the town’s sewer pump stations and work on the Clapper Road Water Treatment Plant, which at about two decades old is still one of the town’s newest pieces of water infrastructure.
Deyoe described the best approach as a “surgical managing of our assets.”
Other major projects under consideration are replacing the roof at the Elm Avenue Park pool complex (the wooden beams are deteriorating); making repairs to the Elm Avenue Park tennis courts (a court there is closed due to cracks in the pavement so large they pose a tripping hazard); at long last opening the Moh He Con Nuck nature preserve to the public with a parking area and some trails; buying four new police cruisers; running sewer service to the Colonial Acres Golf Course (which had a poor year revenue-wise); making state-mandated renovations to the town’s dams; and upgrading the telecommunications system for the water and sewer departments.
There’s also all the work Tropical Storm Irene has necessitated, the scope of which is still not entirely clear.
The Highway Department’s paving schedule would largely remain the same.
All this comes at a time when personnel costs are still rising, hence the proposal on the table to not give any raises and increase health insurance copays for town employees. Five unfilled positions would also be done away with.
Highway Superintendent Gregg Sagendorph said the possibility of no raises or step increases has already had an impact on morale, especially during a time when many town workers are putting in long hours to clean up after Tropical Storm Irene.
“It’s very difficult to keep asking the employees to do more and step up to the plate,” Sagendorph said.
Human Resources Manager Mary Tremblay-Glassman echoed those thoughts and added that staffing levels have gone down in recent years, sometimes leading to employees taking on supervisor-level responsibilities without any pay increase.
“There are less people to provide the same amount of services for a community that’s grown about seven percent over the last 10 years,” she said.
For the Town Board’s part, much of Thursday’s session was spent talking about the balancing act that is the budgeting process.
“We can’t do it all. We can’t provide for sewer and water, we can’t do steps and COLA and we can’t not raise our taxes,” [all at the same time] Councilman Kyle Kotary said.
Councilwoman Joann Dawson referenced the news from states like Florida where public employees are facing pay cuts as coffers run dry.
“When you know there are some government jobs that are taking a cut in their salary, I’m glad we can hold the line,” she said.
There was also some theoretical discussion about what the town can do to open up new revenue streams. For example, the town’s water facilities have the capacity to produce 10 million gallons of potable water per day but only put out 5 million gallons on average. If a customer for the excess water capacity could be found it would be a boon to the town.
The Town Board will go through other areas of the budget in coming weeks before starting to hammer out a final plan. The next step in the process is on Sept. 28, when Messina will present the draft budget during a Town Board meeting. On Oct. 13 the board will meet in another workshop.