Greenwich BET Approves $404.1M Town Budget

The Board of Estimate and Taxation unanimously approved the proposed 2012-2013 town budget on Thursday, thus sending it on to the for a final vote in May. Although members of the bipartisan board congratulated each other for working cooperatively to keep next year’s budget increase under 4 percent, while still funding important town initiatives, several said they were concerned about a perfect storm of looming on the horizon that will have to be dealt with starting next year.

“While I’m generally pleased with the work we’ve done on the budget, what I remain concerned about is that, even with the increases we have in the budget, our contribution to capital improvements — which in this town is often maintaining or improving existing facilities, as opposed to creating new ones — still is in the neighborhood of ten percent of the total budget,” board member Randy Huffman said. “And people who are experts in this field have told us that [10 percent] is not enough to sustain our infrastructure at the level it should be. So we really have some work to do if we want to increase and fund additional capital projects.”

Board member Sean Goldrick pointed to confluence of upcoming projects such as improvements at the town-owned Nathaniel Witherell nursing home; improvements to town sewers; a much-needed upgrade for the town water treatment facility; and the replacement of the Byram Beach public pool, and said he too was concerned about how the town would fund increasing capital needs moving forward. Several BET members pointed to the currently-open-ended cost of environmental cleanup at Greenwich High School as another major concern.

At $404.1 million, the proposed 2012-2013 budget — the first in town history to break the $400 million mark — represents a 3.45 percent increase over the current budget of $390.7 million. It includes $358 million for operating expenditures and fixed expenses such as employee benefits, plus $46 million for capital projects. It also assumes $36.6 million in bonding for capital projects.

Spared from the BET’s mighty budget axe was an additional $12 million for the MISA Project, involving the construction of new music instruction space and auditorium at Greenwich High School (on top of the $17 million approved for the project last year); at Greenwich High School, due to PCBs and other contaminants that were discovered in the soil on the property last July (during initial site preparation for the MISA project); $700,000 to add two new firefighters at the Glenville Fire House to in ; and $2.5 million for the in downtown.

“I view the budget this year as a victory for the taxpayers of the Town of Greenwich,” said Republican Joseph Pellegrino, chairman of the BET Budget Committee. “We struck the right balance between meeting the needs of our citizens and their willingness to pay for those services.”

The board imposed conditions on the funding for the MISA and Central Fire Station projects: Funding for the MISA Project won’t be released until the building committee submits a list of bids for BET review, and funding for the firehouse demolition won’t be released until the BET sees all cost estimates and all land-use permits are issued. What’s more, the BET wants all environmental testing completed on the firehouse site before releasing the funds.

Board member Mary Lee Kiernan applauded her fellow BET members for supporting the $12 million MISA appropriation, “as the project has become far more complicated than anyone expected.” Some town officials and numerous residents have called for the school district to in light of the recent discovery of soil contaminants, the remediation of which has thus far increased the estimated project price tag from $29 million to $37 million.

“As this project unfolds I hope that we can all remember what we heard one year ago at the BET public hearing about the challenging and long-standing space constraints both in music instruction rooms and in the auditorium at Greenwich High School,” Kiernan said. “These constraints have a material impact on the quality of instruction and large scale programming at the school."

Board member Jeffrey Ramer said he was pleased that the BET was able to once again hold the budget increase to under 4 percent as it has for the last 15 years.

"As has been said before, this community has taxes that are the envy of all our surrounding neighbors — and we have services that are second to none," Ramer said. "For 15 years we have said to you that we will keep our mill rate increases between 2 and 4 percent, and for 15 years we’ve kept that process. In fact for 15 years our increases have been below 3.5 percent. This is a finance operation that works well. This is a coherent board that doesn’t have any of the inter-personality difficulties that the media likes to talk about with other boards.”