West Hartford Town Council Unanimously Approves $241.4 Million Budget

The West Hartford Town Council adopted the $241,438,694 budget for 2013-2014 Tuesday night by a unanimous 8-0 roll call vote.

Burke Doar, one of two Republican members of the Town Council, was absent from the meeting due to a business obligation in China. He was unable to vote by proxy but declared his support for the budget in a letter read by Minority Leader Denise Hall.

“The budget at a 1.5 percent increase is certainly the lowest we’ve seen in decades,” said Town Manager Ron Van Winkle. The budget includes $87,396,882 for town expenses, $140,055,899 for the schools, and $13,985,913 for capital financing.

In the final proposal, a total of $115,663 was trimmed from Van Winkle’s March 12 proposed budget of $241,554,357. The majority of the changes results from revised revenue expectations for recycling as well as replacing retired staff with individuals on the lower end of the pay scale.

All Town Council members took advantage of the opportunity to speak publicly about the budget, and were also unanimous in their praise for the professionalism of Van Winkle as well as the staff of the Financial Services Department. Director Chris Johnson, who has announced his retirement, was congratulated for his 30 years of service.

“This has been a little bit of a different dynamic,” said Deputy Mayor Shari Cantor. “This is the best budget that we have had. It has no gimmicks and it has the highest fund balance in years. The school budget is a 0.9 percent increase – the lowest increase in 30 years.”

Steve Adler, an independent, said that a decision to include a new Charter Oak International Academy in this year’s budget is “intelligent.” Construction of the new building under diversity school funding will be reimbursed at a rate of 80 percent of eligible costs.

Adler also stressed that coming out of challenging times it continues to be important to create development in West Hartford, where currently 80 percent of the Grand List is residential.

“I believe that this is the best budget that we’ve put forth in my tenure,” said Leon Davidoff, who has served since 2007. “I want to thank the town residents for believing in us and standing up for town services,” he said.

Davidoff said that although West Hartford has become increasingly “green,” he challenged residents to increase their level of recycling from 30 percent to 50 percent of what’s eligible for an easy way of saving money for the town. “If you want to do your part to lower taxes, recycle,” he said.

“The biggest project in our budget tonight is to allocate funds to replace a 1929 building,” Davidoff added, referencing the construction of a new Charter Oak International Academy as part of the capital improvement budget. Although he said he wasn’t initially convinced of the necessity of the Charter Oak project, Davidoff said he changed his mind once he toured the school, and is pleased that it will cost the town “only 20 cents on the dollar” to replace the building.

“This is the first budget where I can sit here and feel very good about the numbers … it’s not perfect but we’ve come a long way,” said Judy Casperson. She said she also supports the construction of a new Charter Oak building and the value it will add to its neighborhood.

“Well it’s about time,” declared Clare Kindall. “I have been in public service for seven years and every year the process has been miserable,” she said expressing her support for this year’s unusually smooth budget process. She called for applause for Van Winkle for a budget with just a 1.5 percent increase.

Kindall said you could call the process “pure luck” or “serendipity,” but in actuality, she said, “It’s about making some very difficult choices to be able to come to a point where we have a 1.5 percent budget where we’re not cutting schools programs, we’re not cutting services.”

Kindall, who previously served as a member of the Board of Education, also praised the cooperative efforts of the town and school district for combining many functions to achieve significant cost savings.

Harry Captain called the Fiscal Year 2014 budget “truly an exceptional budget.”  
“We’ve accomplished this without any year over year reduction in services … in fact the fund balance is actually at its highest level in 10 years. That’s remarkable – given all of the storms we had,” Captain said. He also noted that the town continues to fund its pension liabilities, and thanked the school board for returning unused monies in its budget to the town.

Minority Leader Denise Hall has vocally expressed her concern regarding funding of the town’s pension and healthcare liabilities many times, and said that the contributions which must be made are painful but necessary. 

She said that as new collective bargaining agreements are negotiated, the town must continue to transition employees to defined contribution plans. “These are the types of benefits that will help us to stabilize our benefit plans and get them set for the future.”

Hall said that this budget authorizes the town to commence its biggest building project in years. Her initial skepticism about the Charter Oak project, she said, was focused on concern that the state would require reimbursement if enrollment goals were not met, which Van Winkle has now confirmed to not be the case.

“If that clawback had still been in existence I would have had a hard time going along with this plan” she said.

“It’s been the best budget,” Hall said, adding that she did not want her remarks to sound too negative.

Mayor Scott Slifka had the last word, and said that although he is immensely pleased with the minimal increase in this year’s budget, he doesn’t want anyone to think that we’re completely satisfied since this budget is not great for every single resident, some of whom are still impacted by last year’s revaluation process.

“It’s about balance – doing what’s possible,” he said. Many aspects of the town’s budget are impacted by decisions made at the state level, he said, and unfortunately individual considerations cannot be addressed.

Slifka praised the continued consolidation of town and school functions, the lowest actual expenditure increase in 21 years, the lowest school board increase in 30 years, the return of money from the school board to the town, and getting back to the highest fund balance in 10 years, without the elimination of any programs or services.

“I like the fact that we’re passing this in the week and on the day that Conard and Hall have been recognized for their excellence – I want people to see it in the context of the challenges that we faced,” he said.

“All of this is not just the product of what this council has done or this [town] manager – but it’s because this community has insisted on making this their priorities,” Slifka said. “This does not happen everywhere.”

None of the other council members mentioned that the unanimous votes are coming in an election year, Slifka said. “It doesn’t mean we don’t disagree, but I do think it reflects that when it’s important we do a very good job ... We’re in a very good place but we do face significant challenges going forward. It’s nice that tonight we’re in a good place.”

The approved budget represents an increase of 3,641,737, or 1.5 percent, over the Fiscal Year 2013 budget of $237,796,957. The mill rate for Fiscal Year 2014 will be 36.30, also an increase of 1.5 percent (.55) from the existing mill rate of 35.75.

Click here to access the budget documents on the Town of West Hartford website.