CAMDEN — The Camden Select Board Tuesday night finally agreed to an FY18 budget to send to the voters at town meeting on Wednesday, June 14, but it was not a unanimous vote. "In the interest of moving on, I will support the vote tonight to get it [the budget] on the warrant, but I won't support it at town meeting," said Select Board chairman John French as they prepared to vote.

The Select Board's final recommended budget at the end of the May 2 meeting was $8,353,019, the same amount recommended by the Budget Committee. Figuring in town revenues of $2,504,190, the net budget was $5,848,829. That net budget represents a 6.68 percent increase over FY17.

As the Select Board worked through final details of the budget on which their recommendation would appear on the town warrant, the town's contribution to employee health care costs and the fate of the full-time economic development director's position were the final issues they haggled about.

At the Select Board's April 25 special meeting, 28-year town employee Marlene Libby stepped up to the podium and said the other town employees asked her to be their spokesperson. At issue was the employee's late discovery that the new $8.3 million budget included a reduction in their benefits, through a change in their insurance.

Health insurance for long-time employees is covered 100 percent as a benefit of their employment. Since 2007, the town covers 80 percent of health insurance premiums for new hires, with the remainder paid by the employee.

"There have been rumblings about whether the change was going to happen to us, it was possibly, maybe, but not definite," said Libby on April 25. "We didn't know it was happening until we heard that the budget figures showed you were going to do it, that you had given your stamp of approval to the lower budget amount compared to if the benefits had stayed the same."

She said she does not take her benefits for granted, and is probably more vested in Camden than she is in own hometown. After 28 years on the job, one of the biggest thing that has kept her in Camden is her benefits, and health insurance is the biggest benefit.

"I know it's costly to the town, to the taxpayers, however for the longtime employees that have been here, to take it away from them it's a big thing," said Libby.

She added that for many years, town employees have been asked whether they would prefer to have a negative change in their cost of living increase, COLA, or negative changes in amount of premium they pay for their health insurance. For many years, she said, employees were more than glad not to take the COLA benefit so their health insurance benefit was not jeopardized.

Libby said that in addition to including the cut in the budget, which would mean around $60/week out of the employee's pay checks amounting to $1-$1.50/hour cut in pay, nobody was told it was coming, and nobody knew they needed to be or go to meetings to discuss it.

"Because we were not getting proper information in other areas, we need to do a better job and get better information going forward," said Select Board member Marc Ratner.

Chairman French said the problem is that the town's budget is already sitting on a 7 percent increase.

Town Finance Director Virginia Lindsey, looking at the numbers, said that the overall tax commitment would be under 5 percent even with a new budget that includes a 7 percent increase.

"You could then convene a committee to look at the health insurance problem and have them come back to you next year," said Lindsey.

French said, "This is not going to get any better [in a year]."

"There is a time when we are going to have to make some hard decisions," said Ratner.

"I thought the time was now," said French.

"The difference is they were not involved in the discussion and that doesn't seem fair," said Ratner.

The Select Board picked up the discussion April 2, with Acting Town Manager Roberta Smith saying that the most recent Select Board recommended budget included money to cover employee health insurance at the current policy.

The Select Board's recommended net budget was $5,872,928, which represented a 7.12 percent increase over FY17. The Budget Committee's recommended net was $5,848,829, a 6.68 percent increase over FY17.

French said he did not support the budget before them, wanting to make cuts to the employee health insurance plan, but said he wanted to be sure to move the issue forward for the next budget committee to review, and so that nobody can say they were not informed.

Select Board member Don White said that having it brought to their attention allows the opportunity to all sit down and look at it.

" lot more information has been brought forward by staff, this has been educational, and maybe some policies and procedures are antiquated and need to be reviewed. You are like family, and I'm so happy we will let the next year go by without the employees of the town of Camden dipping into their pockets," said White.

Ratner said that since the last budget discussion, April 25, he had learned some things about the town employee's benefits. In order to receive the benefits, there are things they gave up.

"It's not Rolls Royce coverage," said Ratner. "Number two, an assessment of the whole budget, it's a tough one. There are things we need to correct, reserve funds we need to build up and maintenance things we need to take care of. Roberta has done a great job to go through and determine where tough choices needed to be made, both to spend and not spend. It's an amazingly well prepared budget."

French said, "We knew in plenty of time about the health care issue but chose not to act on it. But also, we have a new firefighter added to the budget, and that needs to be brought into the discussion with the CEO [code enforcement office]. Maybe we can educate our new firefighters to be part-time code officers. Also, community development, I want to talk about that. I think it's a good time to put that position part-time, until we have full funding in the code's office."

Resident and business owner Oscar Verest was the first to step up and discuss the budget and French's proposal to cut the Community Development Director position, currently held by Karen Brace.

"Do I like to pay 7 percent more? No. But at some point you are confronted with certain situations and you have to decide what to cut and what not to cut. The budget committee is meticulous about looking at this. I think cutting this position [Community Development Director] is not the way to go. The vitality of the town is what's important. A community that is well connected is very important. Why did I move here? It is beautiful, but there is stuff going on. If you are increasing the tax base, you need more people living here but if there is nothing happening, you won't have people coming here," said Verest.

Camden resident Paul Cavalli, also a member of the Budget Committee for the past two years, agreed with Verest about the need to keep the community development position, but also spoke about the work of his committee and his opinion that the select board should endorse the budget as they presented it to them.

"I guess the work done by the budget committee, the thing that gets me at this period, all of us worked 10 nights over the last several months talking about ways to be sensible and make recommendations," said Cavalli. "We had debates, and not everybody agreed, but we took votes. The budget that is ultimately recommended by Roberta [Smith] is overall the same we recommended. We tried to still maintain the services and not make big impacts. There's a lot of thought that went into it and a lot of people who asked questions and I would endorse it as it is presented."

Ratner said he agreed with Verest and Cavalli, and that maybe the job needed to be looked at, refined and managed differently. He called the money saved by making the position part-time was a "token."

"Better manage and change the job would be helpful to the town," said Ratner.

Select Board member Jim Heard completely disagreed, and pointed to the job to date being one of just doing destivals.

"What we have here is an issue with not enough jobs to attract and keep young people," said Heard. "Do we just want to be a town with festivals? I agree with Marc, the job needs to be more than someone who herds volunteers to do festivals, and be more economic development."

Ratner agreed, and then Heard added that he thought that if they cut the position in half, it might open their eyes to what the town could really could do with the community development position.

White said he was not convinced that taking the position out save more than a few dollars. He said with the cut of the position, he would vote against it.

"We have a new town manager coming aboard, and I think when that person arrives they will figure out what is important for the town and what isn't. When the position was created, it was the last town manager's desire to have someone to organize all these groups. I think it's something we need, but it's really something the new town manager should decide," said White.

Heard asked the other Select Board members to recall all the nights they sat in the with budget committee and listened as they deliberated and voted.

"One of the issues raised by those people is they wondered what the value of this position [community development] was. Those people we look to to give us advice on the budget gave us questions about this position more than anything else. This item more than any other line in the budget.," said Heard.

Ratner reiterated that now is not the time to make the cut to the Community Development Director position.

"I think sometimes the question of the position is based more on the person than the position, and I think a lot of it is the direction the person was given by the previous town manager of what they wanted them to do," said Ratner. "I think we should rework the position to be a little bit different, like you said, look for more financial consideration for the town, and like Don said, the new town manager can make a decision if he wants to make a change in that position and if he's happy with the person performing the job."

Ratner then made a motion to authorize the Select Board's recommended budget of $5,872,928, a 7.12 percent increase over last year.

The vote was split, with French and Heard voting opposed and White and Ratner voting in favor. With only four members on the board at this time, the deadlock would need to be broken in order to move the budget forward to the town warrant.

"You are not in favor of changing the health insurance, you are not in favor of adjusting the COLA, you are not in favor of adjusting the personnel, so it's just status quo and let it go," said French to Ratner.

Ratner responded that there are a lot of reasons for those changes, or not making them. Lack of communication, a need to work with the town employees on health care changes and a philosophical difference about the community development position that two on the board felt should be decided by the incoming town manager.

"And now we are two-to-two on a vote due to a $.05 per taxpayer difference," said Ratner.

White asked if there was another expense line that could be delayed for a year, and French said, "firefighter." White said no, that he preferred to stay away from lines involving personnel.

"Why? There is not face that that position, it's not filled yet, so there is nobody you can say you know there," said French.

White asked if the $60,500 line for downtown street lights was something they could consider cutting $42,000 from, leaving some money in it but delaying the bulk of the expense to next year.

"I'm not trying to not doing something, but do something that doesn't affect what I'm trying to protect, well I should say protect, but it's like it's not a person," said White.
Smith told the board that not funding the downtown street light line had tax implications, and affects the town's long range capital planning, "which has taken a serious hit already."

Smith offered the board a suggestion, saying that if they were going to support the new firefighter position, and support the idea of exploring having them doing some of the code enforcement, then they could reduce the planning and codes and assessment line for those part-time hours. She said without doing the exact calculation, this would allow them to reduce their bottom line budget to end up with the exact same budget the budget committee recommended.

Ratner asked Camden Fire Chief Chris Farley if that was a workable position for his firefighters, and Farley said yes.

"It's a conversation started before Roberta retired, when Jeff Nims [former CEO/Planner] retired. Andrew [Lowe, asst. fire chief] and I have had that discussion and said we would commit to doing that," said Farley. "It's a model used in other places, and we already do inspections of businesses with licenses and see code issues we don't currently have the ability to do anything about other than walk across the hall and say, 'Here's an issue.'"

Ratner said that the new firefighter position is essential, and it more than makes up for having to cover codes enforcement as well. He made a motion to have the fire department perform more code enforcement work, and reduce the codes budget.

Smith told the board that amounted to cutting $24,099 out of general government, in planning, development and assessing, and continuing the community development position full time.

"But it's all on the same line, so however you shuffle things around is up to you," said Smith.

Hearing that figure, Heard said, "That's peanuts, we are not going to do that. That's less then the $42,000 [cut originally being sought]."

After stating the same positions, French pushed for a vote by the board, and it was again split, with French and Heard opposed and White and Ratner in favor.

"So are we going to talk about something we can agree will have some substantial impact, or are we going to go to town meeting divided, I guess," said French.

Ratner said that neither option had substantial impact, but the idea was to save the community development position for the new town manager to work with.

"And maybe make changes, which I heartily recommended. And yet we are doing something where we can save some money, and as we just heard from the fire chief, actually having the responsibility to work on other code violations will make their job easier. This really seems like a smart move. There is no substantial money we can save here. It just isn't there," said Ratner.

"In the interest of time and moving on tonight, I will support the vote to get it on the warrant, but I won't support it at town meeting. This is a half support. I think it needs to go to the floor to be decided," said French.

Ratner made the motion, which was to recommend the budget committee’s recommended $5,848,829 budget, a 6.8 percent increase over last year.

The vote was unanimous.

Related:

• Camden’s annual Town Meeting (Open Town Floor) will be on Wednesday, June 14, at 7 p.m. in the Camden Opera House Auditorium.

• FY18 Final Budget with Budget Committee and Select Board Recommendations

• Ragged Mountain Foundation pays half of Camden's $743,134 Snow Bowl shortfall

• As deadlines inch closer, towns with June elections report varying numbers of confirmed candidates

• Committee approves Camden Snow Bowl's $874,000 budget, reviews audit report

• Camden voters pass $7.1 million budget; Lookner, French sworn in

Reach Editorial Director Holly S. Edwards at hollyedwards@penbaypilot.com; 207-706-6655