STAMFORD – It's time to roll up your sleeves for the six citizens elected to be the city's financial watchdogs.
Finance Committee members began taking a closer look at Mayor Caroline Simmons' proposed $685.4 million budget for the city and school district.
Simmons' spending plan for 2024-25 is 5.5% higher than this year's budget. To that end, members of the Finance Committee met Monday to gather additional information as they prepare to decide on funding requests submitted by department heads starting this week.
“The amount of money the city is proposing to spend on operations next year…is a really big number, much larger than we typically see,” Board Chair Richard Friedman told his colleagues. Told. “So I looked at the budget documents and looked at how they got so big.”
He listed the factors contributing to the largest increase in operating expenses:
- Employee wages increased by $14.4 million.The result of resolving a long-overdue union contract that required funding for retroactive salary increases.
- $1 million to fund seven new positions in the 911 emergency center.
- $997,000 in increased trash collection costs
- Pay $976,000 for new software and technology consultants.
- $743,000 for police tasers and cameras
- $730,000 for eight new fire department positions.
But Friedman told the finance committee he learned the good news from discussions with tax assessors.
Expenses, and ultimately taxes, are offset by growth in the Grand List, which is the value of all taxable property in the city. The listed value of new construction increased 0.8 percent from last year, Friedman said.
That will be enough to offset some of the increase in operating expenses and reduce Simmons' expected property tax hike from nearly 5% to about 4.2%, Friedman said.
And that's before the Finance Committee and the House of Commons make a decision, he said.
On Monday night, members of the Finance Committee focused on “upgrades,” or increases in employee pay that are separate from cost-of-living increases and phased raises included in the union contract.
“The city is not contractually obligated to elevate you, so we need to talk about that. There are some really big upgrades,” Friedman said.
“There are a lot of them,” says board member Laura Barwick.
Board Vice Chair Mary Lou Rinaldi said the city's 2022 audit will not be conducted until a year after the deadline and is currently It said it was postponing the completion of the audit to 2023. .
The delay forced the city to pay an additional $1 million to an outside auditor commissioned by the state to conduct the audit.
“People's salaries are going up, but they're not doing the work we're paying them to do,” Rinaldi said. “Last year, the upgrade cost was $250,000. We cut it by 50%, but you can see that no lessons were learned. We have to take a close look at this. We cannot sustain these salary increases.”
Rinaldi said the budget includes salary increases for the Office of Taxation and the Controller's Office, as well as the Office of Operations, the School of Engineering and the Department of Human Resources. He said members of the Finance Committee want to know if there is more.
They also asked the government to provide clarity on some of its revenue projections.
“Building permit fees are expected to increase by $2.3 million. We'll need an explanation as to why that happens,” Friedman said.
Friedman also explained why the budget estimates tax revenue from marijuana sales in the city would be $300,000 more than this year's budget estimate and why it estimates interest earned on city funds would increase by $2 million. He also said he would like to know.
Mr Barwick asked why engineering and maintenance contracts, which were over budget this year, were predicted to cost less next year, as well as overtime costs for trash collection and disposal.
“It looks like last year's utility bill was $205,000, and next year's budget is $159,000. We see this in many city buildings,” Barwick said. “Are electricity and gas bills getting cheaper?”
Commissioner Dennis Mahoney said the finance committee asked department heads to submit a one-page summary listing items that could be cut from the funding request. Mr Mahoney said he hoped the government would take the issue seriously.
“I talked to people who are involved in this process and they said, ‘What are you worried about? This increase will not exceed the increase in New Canaan or the increase in Darien,” Mahoney said. “I thought it was a little tone-deaf. Maybe people in New Canaan and Darien can withstand these tax increases, but a lot of people in Stamford can't, so we have a much greater responsibility.” There can't be a bandwagon effect where everyone goes for a 4% or 5% tax increase. So we can also increase taxes.”
This month, the New Canaan Finance Committee approved a 5.2% budget increase. The town council is scheduled to vote on it in April.
The Darien Select Board recommended a 5.1% increase last month. Final approval is due in May.
According to the U.S. Census, the median household income in New Canaan and Darien is about $250,000 a year. At Stanford, it's $100,700.
Mahoney said he is concerned that the school board's budget request is $20 million more than last year. School board members “said in public meetings that we don't care about the city's credit rating, but it's our responsibility to care,” he said.
The school board funded the jobs with federal pandemic relief money that expires June 30 and is now asking the city to collect the cost of the jobs.
“They've spent years trying to alleviate the problem and they've done nothing,” Mahoney said. “It's up to us to find that solution.”
Rinaldi said after the meeting that salary increases must be justified.
“If that person is making $170,000 or $180,000 a year, why give them an upgrade? The people who have to pay for it aren't getting those increases,” Rinaldi said. said. “Did the job description change? Was HR involved? Did the HR committee approve it? There are a lot of squirrels we need to know more about.”
