Monday night’s Town Council meeting lasted just under an hour. With no public hearings or old business on the agenda, the council kept the meeting moving.
The longest portion of the meeting was public comment where citizens of the town can address the council about any and all issues in town.
Most recently, new public comment rules were accepted that limit public comments to five minutes of each individual, because the council is unaware of what they will be speaking about beforehand. One member of the public came forth to question the council about their decision to no longer help the school district with the town’s undesignated fund balance.
This issue had been ongoing for months after a tax shortfall that required the town and school to pay $600,000. The School Board had a difference of opinion on who should be the ones to pay and allocated to pay $0 towards the shortfall. The Town Council was disappointed to hear this, but dipped into their undesignated fund balance to ensure that the shortfall was fixed. After this, the town made the decision to not dip into their undesignated fund balance again to help the school district.
Town resident John Wilson was concerned about the town no longer helping the school. “Suppose there was a disaster prior to April 16 (before the rule was passed) that affected the school district. Would you or would you not have dipped into that fund to help the school district?” he asked the council. Chairman John Farrell told Wilson that the town would have to make an argument and go to court and get that money released, but only after the school district exhausts all the money in their rainy day fund.
“If they (school district) came to us today and said “we need a million dollars”, and we had a million dollars? It’s the taxpayer’s money,” Farrell said. “I believe the recommendation of this council would be to engage our attorney to go to court and release that money.” Wilson and Farrell went back and forth for several minutes with Wilson arguing that the school district should not have paid the money towards the shortfall. “That rainy day fund was calculated on 7% of the school district’s money,” Wilson said. Farrell engaged him further telling him that is not what the money is for.
“They are $440,000 short. Had we not let the clock tick, we could have sent a supplemental tax bill, but we chose not to. We let the clock tick and we changed our policy to not burden the taxpayer further.” Farrell responded. Chairman Farrell then gave Wilson a chance to ask one more question before moving on. Wilson asked the council if they thought it was fair to put the school district in a position that at one point in time they thought they had some use of the rainy day fund and a day later they have zero dollars of that fund. Farrell told Wilson that they will no longer be holding money for the school district. They (the town) made a policy change and it is not the school district’s money. It is the taxpayer’s money and is managed by the municipality.
Councilor Tom Dolan also stepped in to say that the town encourages the school to be financially responsible and put money aside at the end of every year to build up money to allocate into the undesignated fund balance. “The school district can take financial measures to put aside money and save up.” Dolan said. Chairman Farrell then put an end to the debate, saying that they had gone well over the five minute threshold. “I appreciate your comments, but we’re not going to agree,” Farrell told Wilson.