Selectmen
shocked with CIP request 4.2 M too much, they said
By Elizabeth Prata
New Gloucester--Selectmen and Manager Rosemary Kulow
sat down Monday night to go over the Capital Improvement
requests lodged from the Town Departments, and Chair
Steve Libby said he was in shocked overwhelmed with
the requests totaling of 4.2 million dollars.
This fiscally conservative town has had successive
years of holding the line of tax rates with their
practices of fiscal management of their surplus, the
intense scrutiny of each dollar spent, and their consistent
application of strict standards to all purchases and
requests. No amount is too small to scrutinize and
no paid work will be done if there is a way to get
of for free.
Monday night the CIP requests were supposed to go
to the Capital Improvement Committee, and ad-hoc committee
formed each year of volunteers who go over each request
and wash them though a rigorous rating system. Then
they are presented to the Selectmen for their review
and absorbed into the municipal budget. The budget
is presented to voters of the town at the Annual Town
Meeting in May, where is it debated and voted up or
down by citizens attending.
The CIP rating system includes a business case for
each request, with the following criteria:
"Justification For Request & Description
Of Alternatives Considered, Estimated Cost, Amount
Requested, Amount In Capital Reserve, Potential Funding
Source(S), Estimated Recurring Costs If Project Is
Funded, Year Needed, Department Priority, CIP Committee
Comments."
The Department Priority is a scale from 1 to 5, with
1 being an immediate and pressing need, with a 5 being
a further in the future, nice to think about having
kind of request. Monday night, Mr. Libby, looking
over the list, noted that most Departments had rated
their requests as '1's.' "I see one item as a
priority 3. Most are 1's. If we funded so many 1's
we would not be able to pay our taxes next year."
Mr. Libby expressed his concerns with the fact that
several items were not consistent with the long-range
plan and others, if funded, would indicate a change
in Town policy. He suggested reviewing the CIP list
before the Committee does and then giving it to the
committee for their review.
Selectmen David Lunt saw that there was a request
from the Fairgrounds Committee for $15,000 for an
amphitheater. Mr. Lunt said that as liaison he had
told the committee to be extremely frugal in their
requests. "Extremely, like not spend any money,"
he said. Selectmen Kevin Sullivan agreed that the
Selectmen should take a look before allowing the CIP
Committee to proceed.
Town Manager Rosemary Kulow said that there were two
large items in the priority list, which if they were
taken out would reduce the CIP to 1.3 million. She
said that the full funding for the new Town Fire Station
had been included to the tune of 3 million, and all
of the paving projects had been inlcuded this year.
Paving had been in Operations previously, not CIP,
but upon further reflection this year, Ms. Kulow said,
paving is really a capital improvement and not simply
operations.
Selectmen took no action except to vow to review the
CIP list over the next two weeks and work with it
at the November 28 Selectmen meeting. After that,
Selectmen will hand it to CIP Committee.
