BARRE — May will be the new March this year as flood-related fiscal uncertainty just prompted a skittish Barre City Council to postpone the city’s Town Meeting Day elections.
Acting on the unanimous recommendation of City Manager Nicolas Storellicastro, his assistant, Dawn Monahan, and City Clerk Carol Dawes, councilors agreed they didn’t have enough good information to comfortably adopt a budget to present to voters on the first Tuesday in March.
The council’s vote — it was unanimous in the absence of Mayor Jake Hemmerick — does not mean the polls won’t be open at the Barre Municipal Auditorium on March 5. That’s still the date of Vermont’s presidential primary, and when officials in the Barre Unified Union School District and the Central Vermont Career Center School District are planning to hold their separate annual elections.
The change only affects Barre’s municipal elections, which among other things, will tack two months on to Hemmerick’s first two-year term as mayor and Dawes’ last as the city’s clerk-treasurer.
Councilor Thomas Lauzon pressed the point during a budget update that raised more questions than it answered Tuesday night.
By far, the biggest of those questions involves how much money the city can reasonably expect to receive in flood relief during a legislative session that just started.
The city has asked for more than $1.4 million in assistance and Storellicastro has penciled in $975,000 as a source of revenue in the latest version of his budget. It’s one that restores $247,000 of $526,000 in previously recommended cuts, calls for spending $14.8 million, an increase of 7.65%, and, at least on paper, would add roughly 10 cents to the municipal tax rate — an increase of just under 5%.
Storellicastro stressed the precarious nature of that projection in a city that is confronting a grim forecast with respect to its Grand List in the wake of catastrophic flooding last July and is saddled with rapidly rising labor costs.
“This is very much still a ‘house-of-cards’ budget,” he said, suggesting if the city doesn’t get something approaching the $975,000 he is banking on for revenue all bets are off.
“We are back to where we were a couple of weeks ago, which is continuing the hiring freeze; looking to labor (unions) for savings; and … basically finding that ($975,000) … in a combination of cuts and property tax increases,” he said. “(It’s) not a good combination.”
Enter Lauzon, who revived an idea first floated by Storellicastro last month. At the time, Storellicastro recommended the council consider delaying municipal elections until May given massive uncertainty with respect to the city’s finances.
That uncertainty hasn’t evaporated, and Lauzon said he had come to believe the delay recommended by Storellicastro — one supported by Monahan and Dawes — should be heeded by the council.
Though there have been hopeful signs from the Legislature, the session is in its infancy and where ongoing discussion of relief for flood-impacted communities will end up was impossible.
“We’re a long way from the finish line,” he said, suggesting the consequences of gambling and guessing wrong would be profound.
While it is considered an unlikely outcome, if Barre received no direct aid as a result of the flood, paying for the budget that was on the table Tuesday night would add nearly 31 cents to the tax rate, a one-year increase of roughly 14.6%.
Councilors were told those jaw-dropping numbers were only marginally better under a more plausible scenario. If the city receives $500,000 in direct aid from the state a rate hike of nearly 10% — almost 21 cents — would be needed to finance the proposal.
Lauzon said before the council asked voters to approve a budget it should have a much firmer handle on its impact than it would if it stuck to the Town Meeting Day timeline.
“It is not kicking the can down the road, it is not relying on funny money, it’s allowing the data to come to you,” he said. “We’re going to get the answer, but we’re not going to get the answer by the end of January, I will guarantee you that.”
Councilor Teddy Waszazak agreed.
“All we’re doing is buying ourselves more time to make a better educated decision so we can be more fiscally responsible when it comes to tax dollars,” he said, swiftly seconding Lauzon’s motion to delay this year’s municipal elections to May 14.
There was no disagreement.
Even Michael Boutin — who ran the meeting in Hemmerick’s absence — the “staunch” opposition when Storellicastro first raised the possibility, said he’d had a change of heart and believes postponing the elections this year was in the city’s best interest.
Based on a decision the council didn’t expect to make Tuesday night, and will ratify when it meets next week, election-related deadlines will change.
Instead of having to finalize the budget, and the warning for the election, by the end of the month, Dawes said the council now has until April 9 to conclude that work.
Though it will delay her retirement and mean presiding over an extra election, Dawes said she wholeheartedly endorsed the delay given the unique circumstances the city is in this year.
“It makes so much sense,” she said, adding: “It makes a huge difference and will allow us to give really good numbers to the voters in May.”
Voters will decide how “good” those numbers really are and Lauzon offered a word of caution.
“If we receive $1 million (in flood-related aid) we can all breathe a sigh of relief, but (the tax rate is) still going up 5%, which is more than our senior citizens got when their Social Security checks came in January,” he said, noting that also doesn’t reflect the cost of running the school system.
david.delcore
@timesargus.com
