For some Sunday homework, take up Town Administrator Jim Goncalo’s draft budget, released on January 21 (PDF), particularly with an eye toward claims that salaries are not going up. We all know, of course, that contracts are just shy of commandments when it comes to budgeting, but it’s worth taking a look at the upshot.
Mr. Goncalo, for example, is getting a 2.65% raise, to $86,127, and his administrative assistant is going up 4.04%, to $37,454. The town clerk is budgeted for a 3.5% raise, to $51,899, with another $4,864 going to her clerical staff, plus another $800 for longevity bonuses in the office.
The town solicitor gets another $25,000 for litigation; the municipal court clerk gets another $538; the building/zoning official gets $508 more and $1,000 of new vacation coverage, with $894 more for clerical; the town planner goes up $1,014, plus $996 for clerical. The tax assessor’s office sees $1,300 more for personnel services, another $1,537 for clerical, and $1,000 in office longevity bonuses. Similarly, the treasurer gets $1,853 more and $2,189 more for clerical. The part-time tax collector loses $645, but the clerical staff gains $1,535.
In the fire department, the 32 firefighters’ salary line items are only going up $2,281, but the chief gets $1,125 more and the clerk gets another $1,643. Moreover, overtime is budgeted for an additional $20,000, and longevity takes another $9,043.
The police department, by contrast, is seeing an overall $3,673 decrease in salaries, including drops in longevity, holiday pay, and overtime. One should note, though that the chief is getting an additional $2,101, the two records clerks are splitting $8,529, and the secretary gets another $965. The animal control officer also sees a $994 increase.
Elsewhere in town government, a new harbor master assistant is getting $2,400. The public works superintendent is getting $1,466 more, and his clerk, $996, while the eight maintenance workers are collectively costing only an additional $1,283. The two landfill workers are only seeing $306 more, albeit with $600 more in sick time. The town’s maintenance foreman gets $1,394, and custodial personnel, $859. The senior center director’s raise is 5.4%, to $46,305, and the assistant director’s 6.48% to $16,190.
And none of this takes into account that insurance benefits are budgeted to cost the town another $198,159.
These increases in personnel costs would clearly not be exorbitant in normal times, and I don’t mean to suggest that any particular employees don’t deserve every penny of additional money even during extraordinarily difficult times. The point is that there’s a reason the budget committee has had to take a scalpel to the budget just to get it under the levy increase, even as local taxpayers make up for projected decreases in state aid.
It would certainly be reasonable to argue on behalf of that exchange of taxpayer dollars over the cap for increases in personnel costs, but it’s an argument that has to be made. Those who wish to increase taxes by double-digit percentages can’t just badmouth those of us on the other side and pretend that the budget numbers are akin to a force of nature that we simply must accept.
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