Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
So, for the sanding issue, the pattern of sand on the road can be attributed to different things, equipment not operating properly; hydraulic valve sticking or not functioning correctly (lack of preventative maintenance) sander not operating correctly (lack of maintenance) bearings needing grease, chain frozen or out of adjustment, spinner motor junk or on its way. With sand, it is possible due to it being stockpiled out doors, it is wet and heavy and will not spread efficiently. Sand like salt needs to be dry (as in stored under cover) to work best. When you are using a screening plant in the winter to re-screen sand (as in doing the job at least twice/repeating it) that tells of an issue with storage. This also adds to the cost - fuel/time/labor all equate to dollars = tax money wasted!
For budgeting, I do not know about anyone else, but how do I estimate how much money to put aside for electricity without considering how much my cost was for the previous year? What do I use as a basis for an electric budget? Do I pull a number out of my butt? I believe you look at last year's cost, say it was an average of $100.00 per month, so I say I need to put aside at least $1200.00 for the next year, plus a little bit more, in case electric costs go up, it is a colder winter and I use more electricity, it is warmer so I run the A/C or fans more.
Another item,town vehicles, as in owned by the Town, as in owned by the Taxpayers. Whatever Town owned vehicles are maintained or repaired by the TOWN mechanic who is paid by Town revenue - as in TAXES, I believe there is an item voted on at Town Meeting and voted on by the Tax payers /residents and it is called (or was) Town vehicle maintenance expense and I would tell anyone to request a copy of the Town budget versus actual document so you could see the fund name, how much was appropriated and the fund/account number, I cannot do that now because the Town Administrator and the town accountant will tell you that ya'll voted for a new format and those individual items are no longer listed by name and there fore, you as a taxpayer can no longer easily find and check on these numbers. But, since there is an amount of money set aside by town meeting vote to repair town vehicles, why are we going to complicate things by trying to have the fire department or the police department or the COA now have to set money aside to reimburse the highway department for work done to COA vehicles? I mean seriously, WTF? That would be a continuation of simply moving money around to pay for things, as in robbing peter to pay paul. Since there is a fund for town vehicle expense and these vehicles belong to the town, it is not the highway department's money or budget, it is taxpayer money and whether it is money used to maintain a highway department truck or a COA van, that is how that money was voted and the department head is the one who submits that budget knowing it is for ALL town vehicles so if more money is needed, then ask for it, and if the town administrator/selectmen lower it, then they can explain any short falls or situations that may come up.
My thought is this: if the town administrator was/is such a financial guru, then a town where he worked for 8 or more years would not have let him go so easily and another town would not have had an article to abolish the position of town administrator just to get rid of him.
Before anyone plans on spending anything, how much taxes do we have to spend?
Jeff, I do think the costs associated with repairs from individual departments matters. What account is the Mechanic paid from,Highway? If the Mechanic is spending 50% of his time fixing police, fire and coa vehicles then two things are happening. Highways budget is increased by the percentage of outside repairs and the police, fire, coa, etc are not covering the true costs on their own, in their budget. This is about the proper allocation of funds otherwise why even break the budget down by department?
ReplyDeleteI'm not even talking about paying money back and forth. I'm talking about tracking expenses. How much time is spent working on COA, Police, Fire, Highway equipment. If we dont track it we wont know. If 20% of the mechanics time is spent working on COA vehicles and 50% of the repair costs are on Fire equipment shouldn't we be able to track it?
Why is the Mechanic paid under the Highway Budget? I mean we had short staff on Highway to save money all summer, we reorganized departments to save money, but we cannot have individual departments pay for their own work?
I believe I understand the point you make that we'd just be complicating something unnecessarily, but thats were we disagree, I think it is necessary to accurately account for expenses. Now we appear to be using the fudge factor. Pay a mechanic full time from highway, but have him spend X time fixing police, fire, coa, etc.
The industry I was in required every employee to account for time. Whether you punched in and out of each job or accounted your time on each job even breaking it down to what process or stage you were working on.
Under the present system how do we even determine an accurate maintenance budget since we dont have an accurate picture of what we are repairing? How many vehicles, what type, how many miles driven, condition, etc......... I'd say we pull most numbers from the same place....someone butt.
What happens if the mechanic screws up working on a cruiser and has to fix the problem again the right way ! do they charge the police dept twice for the same problem
ReplyDeleteWhat happens now?
DeleteShould the highway budget be charged twice for work done on a police cruiser?
Does the mechanic actually do highway duties other than mechanic work?
I believe the budget for maintenance of town vehicles was something like $90,000. Whats the age of the fleet? How many vehicles in this fleet? How many miles are placed on these vehicles.
Check out the comments from the Secretary of State.
ReplyDelete"It's going to hurt public education in a number of communities because people are going to be very reluctant to see increases in their real estate taxes, which they won't be able to deduct," Galvin said. "It's going to put people in a worse position. It's just bad policy. It's anti-Massachusetts."
Read more: http://www.sentinelandenterprise.com/breakingnews/ci_31551365/rush-set-up-llcs-met-caution-from-top#ixzz52PEApCaT
Because one time, the members of one ATM voted not to go line by line through the budget, how does that change the format for the rest of the Town Meetings, after over 250 years ? Because our TA says so ? Markel must have driven himself nuts trying to hide money, what to pad, how much to add or reduce the budget, so it would slip through. Remember those 20something changes in the last week before town meeting when he was here ? The budget presented and approved at the ATM, was not the one the BOS approved. Who noticed that ? One Selectman ! Doug. Morrison was the only one who knew what he was looking at, and he was upset. When funds were tight you may remember, the TA handed our raises before he walked out the door, and the BOS did not do the right thing (in my opinion) and rescind them. No, when the elderly was trying to make ends meet on their SS money, some of our town workers got very, very big raises. Whether they earned them or not is debatable. The way I look at it, you have to lay down to get walked on. It is time for people to show up and stand up for themselves. Bev
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