Brattleboro’s FY18 budget was approved by the Brattleboro Selectboard for presentation to Representative Town Meeting in March, ending a nine week process of review and adjustment. Your municipal taxes will increase 3.5 cents if approved by representatives.
A new IT plan will streamline Town networks and allow staff to use 2017 technology. Commonwealth Dairy and Hermit Thrush Brewery were assisted with land and loans, a new Mexican restaurant will open soon, Town audits show a clean bill of financial health, and mobile homes will be protected from future flooding.
Preliminaries
Town Manager Peter Elwell let the board know that the state would be doing a study of the stretch of Rt. 30 from Cedar Street to just past the West River park, to see if keeping it at 40 mph would be a good idea. The state traffic committee will make the decision, and Brattleboro will be allowed to weigh in.
A few items came up under selectboard comments and committee reports. John Allen reported that Brattleboro would continue to do composting with the Windham Solid Waste District, despite the MRF being shut down. Elwell added that contracts would be finalized soon and brought back to the board for approval.
Dick DeGray asked about the flashing lights downtown, saying that many people had complained to him about the difficulty for pedestrians without a way to trigger a crossing signal. Elwell said parts were on the way and lights should be fixed no later than next week. An accident at the intersection of Main and Elliot “knocked the system out of service” he said.
David Schoales noted that there could be up to five resolutions of the Town meeting ballot, and encouraged anyone wanting to run for a seat to get their petitions in before the deadline.
Liquor Commissioners – Casa Diaz
The Brattleboro Selectboard, acting as Liquor Commissioners, approved of a first class liquor license and outside consumption permit for Casa Diaz at 1380 Putney Road.
The restaurant’s representative said that it would feature authentic Mexican recipes and a full Mexican bar. They’ll use a small strip of sidewalk area near the parking lot for outside dining.
FY18 Budget – Approval of Final Budget For Representative Town Meeting
The board approved and sent to Representative Town meeting their final FY18 municipal budget, a document that has been discussed steadily at nine meetings since the beginning of November.
Property taxes will go up by 3.5 cents to bring in $14,267,946 toward the total $17,483,842 budget. The rest of the money comes from Rooms & Meals taxes, transfers from other funds, and dipping into the fund balance (a.k.a. savings account/rainy day fund).
Elwell pointed out that the 3.5 cent increase is almost exactly equal to the payments for the Police and Fire facilities bonds in this early, peak year of bond repayment.
Overall, the board made decreases of $231,148 in property taxes since the budget was originally proposed.
Dick DeGray was successful in getting the board to vote to reconsider his suggestion of using the Creamery bridge for wedding and events, but when they re-voted, the result was the same as before and the Creamery bridge will not be improved for events.
Police and Fire Facilities Projects Updates
At West Brattleboro Fire Station, walls and ceiling are being painted, doors and plumbing being installed, and the mechanical room is nearing completion. Efficiency Vermont will perform a blower door test on February 1. The Fire Department is still expected to move in during February.
Sitework and foundation pouring continue at Central Fire Station. Steel will be delivered by the end of the month.
At the Black Mountain Road Police Station, the Reformer’s tenant space is being fitted up for them to move in by March.
The board authorized about $65,000 in additional expenses out of the project contingency funds for items that were originally planned, but cleverly taken out of the original contract to avoid contractor administrative markup or to make sure the project was far enough along to be confident of using some of the contingency.
Items include Station Alerting for West Brattleboro, fire station furnishings, gear extractors for fire stations, and a radio tower, lockers and generator transfer switch for West Brattleboro’s station.
$781,450 remains in the contingency fund after these expenditures.
Nonetheless, this bothered members of the board. DeGray, Gartenstein, and O’Connor all had questions about why these essential items weren’t already included and paid for, and whether there were more items that would be bought with contingency funds.
“This seems like the old hidden ball trick to me,” said DeGray. “We took these things out to get to a certain number, knowing they’d come back and the contingency would pay for them.
Project Manager Steve Horton defended the process. He said he was asked for a budget when the three stations were in the concept phase and a location for the police station still had yet to be found. “Our planning is good,” he said. “Everything we can save we have saved and put aside for the benefit of the Town of Brattleboro.
He directly addressed DeGray, telling him that “my honor and integrity is so important” and that he did not want to think he was in any way doing ball tricks.
Elwell elaborated, too, saying that more big ticket essentials such as generators would be requested to be paid for with the contingency funds, but also that “we have had this conversation before.”
He reminded the board of earlier discussions about holding back some items until milestones were accomplished that assured enough contingency funding would be available to purchase them, but that they had been expected to be bought all along.
David Schoales seemed to understand when he summarized “you can save money by not putting some things into the Guaranteed Maximum Price bid.”
DeGray wasn’t fully satisfied and was the lone vote against the purchases.
Monthly Finance Report with John O’Connor
Finance Director John O’Connor gave the board the half-time financial report for the year, showing them the numbers for December.
50% of the fiscal year is complete and the General Fund expenditures at 53.5% of the annual budget. Utilities Fund expenditures are at 50.9% and Parking Fund expenditures are at 46.5%.
Solid Waste Fund revenues are at 42.6% and expenditures at 40.9%, with the regular reminder that December’s bag revenue collection costs and tipping fees get recorded a month later.
$3,863,600 has been loaned out and $656,612 is available for additional grants and loans, with O’Connor noting some scheduled for later in the meeting.
There are 44 active grants and 8 more being applied for at this point in time.
FY16 Financial and Single Audits
Brattleboro received the final FY16 audit from Bonnie K. Batchelder, CPA, of Batchelder Associates, P.C., and received good marks all around.
John O’Connor was able to summarize the multiple reports for the board, telling them no material weaknesses were found, no deficiencies, no findings, and no unresolved issues.
“56% of property taxes will be used for public education. People need to rememeber that,” noted John Allen.
DeGray asked about the Utility surplus and was told the number he was looking at showed the difference between assets and liabilities in the fund. “It’s not all cash. It’s equity,” O’Connor explained. Elwell said there soon would be a board discussion about possibly adjusting utility rates.
Gartenstein asked about post-employment benefit liabilities. O’Connor said it was listed as a $2.7 million liability, “but we don’t fund it, we pay cash each year,” to cover any payouts. (Elwell added that if it were funded, we would draw from that fund.)
John Allen congratulated O’Connor and his department for continued good audits. “Kudos to your department.”
Partial Release of Easement for Commonwealth Dairy
Commonwealth Dairy will buy 1.05 acres of land from the Town for a dollar. It’s a small bit of land formerly included in a conservation easement agreement, located at one edge of the Delta Campus.
The easement was formerly a buffer between the Delta Campus and a Rural Residential zoning district, but new Land Use Regulations have altered the zones and the buffer is said to be no longer needed.
The Brattleboro Development Review Board recommended the change, and the Selectboard voted to release the property from the easement.
Rod Francis and Craig Miskovich explained the easement.
John Allen said he was glad there were no issues with “ancient frogs or burial grounds” but wondered if Commonwealth could expand further if they needed to in the future.
Miskovich, representing the dairy, said that by shuffling things around and moving parking and administrative offices to new parcels, the factory could now add capacity and expand.
“I want the pudding made there,” said Kate O’Connor.
“You are not in a position to put a condition like that on this, “ answered lawyer Miskovich.
The board approved of the easement release 5-0.
Small Business Assistance Program Loan – Hermit Thrush Brewery
The board approved of loaning Hermit Thrush Brewery $70,000 for planned improvements at their beer-making establishment. The loan is for 5 years at 3.25%, with monthly payments of $1,265.60.
Hermit Thrush plans to buy the Leader Distribution building in Dummerston for beer storage and fermentation, and use this loan to add an ADA bathroom and hydraulic loading dock at the downtown location.
Part of the agreement requires Hermit Thrush to use the “Brattleboro” name “on all branding for Hermit Thrush products.
DeGray asked if the money would be used solely for downtown improvements, and was told by Chrisophe Gagné that it would.
Total expansion costs are $1,254,000. 20 new jobs are expected over the next five years.
Tri-Park VCDP Application Public Hearing and Program Income
The Brattleboro Selectboard approved of a grant application and town program income to support planning for Brattleboro’s Tri-Park mobile home parks.
Planning Director Rod Francis explained that this project aims to ensure long-term resilience of Tri-Park by developing a plan to remove or relocate 42 mobile home units that are currently in the floodway or floodplain.
Francis said some homes might be relocated on existing lands, but some might be moved to new parks. “Quad Park,” he offered. “Or Penta Park.”
The $30,000 VCDP grant will be supplemented by other funds, including $40,000 of program income funds, to pay for the $80,000 project.
“We want to be as supportive as possible in making sure accommodations are made and we work together for health of those housing communities,” said Gartenstein. “They serve a vital function for many residents.”
John Allen asked if it was true that TriPark was the largest mobile home community in the state and was told it was. Mountain Home Park has 258 lots, Glen Park has 23 lots and Black Mountain Park has 26, comprising nearly 8% of Brattleboro’s population.
“Kudos to Brattleboro for that,” said Allen.
Retaining Wall Final Public Hearing
Brattleboro received $300,000 from the Vermont Community Development grant from the State of Vermont to replace the retaining wall between Green Street and Harmony Lot. The work is complete, and the close-out process for the grant required a public hearing.
The Brattleboro Selectboard opened the public hearing, commented favorably on a job well-done (“It’s a really nice looking wall!”,) and closed the hearing with no public comment.
IT Improvement Plan
Brattleboro has decided that 2017 is the time to start coordinated Information Technology (IT) planning. To prepare, Town staff worked with CCI Managed Services to look at our existing computer and network systems and report back with a plan for improvement.
The first step was security improvements, such as firewall protection. Readers may recall the ransomware incident at the fire department that took place just prior to these security upgrades being completed. Elwell said they wanted to do some security work before discussing the full plan publicly, so “we wouldn’t issue an open invitation to hackers.”
The CCI report points out deficiencies and recommends ways to overcome them.
CCI would like Brattleboro to move away from using POP3 email, reduce the number of networks in use, reduce the number of servers, upgrade the servers being used, improve wireless access for the public at Town facilities, connect Gibson-Aiken with the Municipal Center via a point-to-point wireless bridge, bring staff software up to date and into compliance, and plan for regular PC and notebook replacements.
The process was as much about looking at what was need as it was at getting rid of the unnecessary. Elwell said, for example, there are a number of Earthlink accounts “with a poor paper trail” that they want to understand before pulling the plug. (This answers this writer’s questions “Is Earthlink still in business, and does anyone use them?” Yes and yes.)
The price estimate is in the range of $67-88,000 for most of the municipal IT improvements, and $81,879 will be set aside for IT improvements in the capital fund. No new requests for funds were required, said Elwell, just approval to go forward.
There was a bit of discussion on whether there would be hard wiring at the Municipal Center (not until a decision on the building is made) and whether, as Kate O’Connor put it, there was enough “juice” in the fiber optic network to handle the upgrades.
John Allen felt O’Connor was getting too technical with the “juice” terminology, but otherwise she was told that the network could handle it.
Committee Appointments
The board made a few committee appointments:
Ben Coplan to the Agricultural Advisory Board, Matthew Wright to the Citizen Police Communication Committee, and Oscar Heller to the Energy Committee.
March Selectboard Meetings
The first March Selectboard Meeting will be held at the Library Community Room to make room for election day voting at the Municipal Center.
Representative Town Meeting’s Informational Meeting will be at Academy School on Wednesday, March 15 (Doors open at 6:00pm; Caucuses at 6:30pm; Meeting at 7:00pm)
The Organizational Meeting for new Selectboard members will be on Monday, March 27, at 5:30pm.
'Puters
Even though I tease somewhat about Earthlink, it’s nice to see an IT plan for the first time, and the plan looks pretty good.
After the staff get modernized, I hope we look at the possibility of creating a new utility/income stream by providing high speed internet to residents. Compared to our other utilities, it is low maintenance. It also increases the value of a community, and could create a job or two in addition to giving an edge to Brattleboro home-based businesses.
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One other note – for anyone wanting to understand town finances (hint, hint, people running for office), definitely go read the audits. It’s a great primer.