Why
hasn't GPLA raised any money? Council wondered Monday night
By Elizabeth Prata
Gray--Monday night the Gray Town Council sank their
teeth into the Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) and
discussed how many buildings the Town owns, which
ones need the most repair, and which to perhaps sell.
They reviewed capital requests known and upcoming,
such as the potential bestowal of Pennell Institute
to the Town through civil action before a judge now.
They also discussed the two lines in the CIP that
pointed to two of the Library's upcoming capital requests.
One was a $175,000 potential capital expenditure to
finish the basement slated for 2006 and another on
its heels in 2008 for a library expansion for 1.5
million. Vice-Chair Andy Upham and Councilor Skip
Crane and made the observation to the Manager as to
why those two items were in the CIP, because spending
$175,000 on the Library and then abandoning that improvement
for a new library two years later did not make sense.
Vice-Chair Upham also wondered where the Gray Public
Library Association (GPLA) stands with their fundraising.
They were incorporated specifically as a fundraising
arm and support for the Library but have chosen not
to engage in community building or fundraising since
their incorporation. "If they are a fundraising
arm for the library, then why aren't they raising
any money? They should hear the concern." He
said after the meeting that, "With any and all
capital projects associated with the Library, we should
be able to go to the GPLA and ask, 'how will you participate
in this?' Where is their involvement?"
The CIP was gone through with a fine tooth comb, with
Councilor John Welch, Councilor Skip Crane, and Mr.
Upham all vocal in their stance that no proposed expenditure
should go unscrutinized. Both Mr. Crane and Mr. Upham
asked Manager Mitchell A. Berkowitz why tools have
not been inventoried. They were not interested in
the smaller tools such as screwdrivers, but larger
tools like chainsaws, digital cameras, and buffers,
items that cost more than $250. No inventories of
any tools anywhere were evident in the CIP. In order
to maintain inventory control and for insurance purposes,
they directed the Manager to direct his staff to list
them all.
They also directed the Manager to remove figures that
looked as if they were expenditures but weren't. This
dialogue came about when the Manager was asked why
there were what looked like expenditures for phone
systems of $5,000 four years in a row. Those figures,
Mr. Berkowitz explained, were simply the amounts put
into CIP that were for money that was being accumulated
toward a future expenditure. The Council said that
first of all, why is the Town spending $20,000 on
phones, and second of all, that they only want figures
in the list that are actually expenditures in the
year that they will be expended. "So we can compare
apples and apples," Mr. Upham said.
The Council noticed that some Departments forecasted
their CIP out to 2009, some to 2010, others to 2012.
They directed the Manager to standardize the forecasting
year, ensure that inflation is factored correctly
throughout, and look at numbers for reasonability.
The Council had found inconsistent numbers within
some Departments and the Manager was directed to have
his people take another look.
