BERLIN — The fiscal year 2015 Operating Budget for the town of Berlin was passed unanimously this week with no public comment, but one councilmember did criticize the budgeting process and final budget as being “unsustainable” in the long-term.
During this week’s meeting, Mayor Gee Williams defended the budget, which will dip into town reserves, as a necessary short-term expense that will pay off in the years to come.
Coming in at $15,385,623, this year’s budget represents a 16-percent increase over last year’s $13,251,564. Balancing revenues and expenditures will require the town to dip into reserves to the tune of about $660,000, a move which met criticism from Councilmember Paula Lynch.
“Now we’re going into our piggy bank for $661,000. We can’t keep going this way. This is not a sustainable process,” she said Monday.
This year’s budget won’t send the town into any kind of financial tilt, added Lynch, but it does set everything on a bad track. She felt there were some issues with the budget process this spring that need to be re-examined.
“I think our process was poor this year. I think we would have been better served not to receive an incomplete budget so early, not to have approved salary increases until we knew what some of the other expenses were going to be. I just think we’re on the wrong track with this budget and it needs to be corrected next year.”
The budget contains a 3-percent raise for town employees as well as a one-time $500 bonus to be received at Thanksgiving. It also contains several other large expenditures in areas like infrastructure and stormwater improvements. The electric fund, water fund and sewer fund all saw increases this year over last, with the stormwater fund seeing a $835,600 or 178-percent spike.
But sometimes a tough investment today pays off big down the road, argued Williams. Drawing from reserves this budget was not ideal, he admitted, but all of the major expenses, especially the nearly $1 million in stormwater costs, should not be regular additions to future budgets.
“I too struggled with the idea that for one budget cycle we’d have to rely on reserves,” said the mayor. “But all of these things that we have started are all showing potential.”
There are a lot of long-term projects included in the FY15 budget that if paid for now shouldn’t have to be re-visited as much in the future. Stormwater, for example, is expected to have costs plunge after three years by “hundreds of thousands of dollars,” by Williams’ count. He compared this budget to a surfer looking for a big wave and committing to it.
“When you’re out there, sitting there on your surfboard going up and down, watching the small waves go by, and then when you see the big wave coming … you get into position and you start paddling,” he said. “And you just paddle as hard as you can paddle. And if you timed everything right, again timing is the key, then you caught the wave.”
This year’s budget was also formulated with the expectation that property values, and therefore tax revenue in the town will hold steady or rise in the next few years. Williams said that, “the economy is starting to recover,” and a sustainable budget is reliant, to a degree, with some economic improvement in the years ahead. If things don’t go that well, however, the mayor added that he was confident the town will be in good shape and at most will have to re-arrange some of its priorities.
Lynch didn’t argue that the town might see some payoff for the investments made this year. However, she remained uncomfortable with the overall process and digging into reserves to such a degree. Still, she voted with the rest of the council on the budget.