Weathersfield Weekly Blog-New Town Manager and Town Budget Discussion
Tonight the select board will hold a Special Meeting tonight, Jan. 13 at 6 p.m. to continue discussion of the proposed town budget for FY 2020-2021.
At their January 6 meeting, following an executive session to discuss personnel, the select board announced that they would offer the Town Manager position to Brandon Gulnick a 30 year-old Fall River, Massachusetts chief grant writer. Gulnik will start on February 3 at a salary of $77,000. Gulnik was chosen from a pool of 30 candidates.
Proposed Budget sheets may be viewed at: http://www.weathersfieldvt.org/Selectboard/SBPacket-2020.01.06%20digital.pdf beginning on page 46.
Percent change is calculated by using this formula ((y2 - y1) / y1)*100 = your percent change
Budget discussion from the Jan. 6 meeting included a presentation from Library Trustee Mavis Ellingwood. The proposed library budget is up 6% with an almost $3000 increase in the library director's salary, also an increase of 6%.
During the meeting the "Hartford Decision" was mentioned. That decision comes from the case of Hartford VT selectboard trying to override the library trustees budget for the librarian salary and overall library budget.
If you want to read the court decision: https://libraries.vermont.gov/sites/libraries/files/LawLibrary/VTLegalDecision/LibraryLaw/hartford.pdf
and if you want to read the appellate court's decision: https://libraries.vermont.gov/sites/libraries/files/LawLibrary/VTLegalDecision/LibraryLaw/eo2002-207.pdf
The police department budget was presented by Chief Daniels. He is seeking increases in pay for himself and his officers to come more inline with area departments. He also pointed out that the old cruiser was sold for $9,000 and the money was not put into the police reserve account. Chair Kelly Murphy said she would look into locating these funds.
It was stated that the town's current reserve fund or "rainy day fund" now has $138, 670.30 in it.
The sheets provided to the select board show the following:
Library up 6.48% ($131,741 to $140, 491)-select board asked for some reduction in the budget
Admin down 8.95% ($507,034 to $461, 651)
Listers up 22.35% ($51,037 to $62,446)
Land Use up 10.44% ($72,249 to $79,793)
Police Budget up 0.53% ($304,562 to $306,197)
Fire Service down 0.58% ($175,648 to $174,632)-approved by select board
Town Clerk up 9.17 % ($101,248 to $111,597)-select board removed $2000 for clerical and approved $109,597 (8.24% increase)
Finance up 6.05% ($106,090 to $112,513)
Highway up 4% ($1,224,522 to $1,279,912)
Town meeting voting by Australian ballot will be held on the first Tuesday in March. The Secretary of State's office publishes a nice guide and has an informative website you can checkout.