Officials struggle to craft passable budget

EAST HAMPTON — What began in the soft spring days of May will take its next step in the early autumn of September — approval of the general government budget.

Residents may be forgiven for not realizing the town has still not completed the 2018-19 budget-making process, even though the new fiscal year is now almost two months old.

There are two halves that make a whole municipal budget. One, and by far the larger, is the operations budget for education. Often a sore point for residents in the past, the $30 million school budget passed with surprising ease during voting in the first referendum in May.

But not so the $15 million general government budget, which funds non-education government operations (police, public works) as well as funding capital improvement items and paying down the town’s debt. The reasons why there is no general government budget are many and varied, including anger over a reduction in the size of the increase in spending for education.

But to town officials funding the operations of town government on a month-by-month basis, those whys are becoming of a secondary importance.

The town remains under a hiring freeze. Essential work such as clearing out storm drains that feed into Lake Pocopotaug have been held in abeyance, according to Town Manager Michael Maniscalco.

And the longer the town goes without adopting the general government budget, the more it risks seeing its coveted Triple-A bond rating downgraded.

Now, the town will try again to resolve the matter. The Town Council has scheduled a town meeting on the budget Sept. 10. The third referendum on the proposed spending total will be held Sept. 19.

But even as they were sending the budget back out for a third vote, the council’s Republican majority trimmed the proposed spending package.

“As you know, the council always considers a no vote to mean we need to make cuts, so we did,” council Chairwoman Melissa H. Engel explained in an email.

Among the cuts imposed by the council were a $38,000 reduction in the village center fire system dredging fund (despite complaints about reduced water pressure) and reducing road materials and maintenance by $18,000.

A petition appeared online last week complaining about the condition of the baseball fields outside the schools. However, with funds frozen at last year’s levels, “Parks and Rec’s job is to keep the fields safe, not beautiful,” Maniscalco said.

“Our first priority is the health, safety and welfare of our residents.”

Maniscalco said he is troubled by what he believes is a lack of understanding about what the general government budget pays for — and the risks of not funding it.

“What I haven’t seen is anyone step forward to defend the General Government budget.”

He sought a 1.25 percent increase in spending for operations. The largest share of that was debt service: paying down the debt on previously approved projects.

In this instance, “the largest majority of that increase was the high school debt,” Maniscalco said Wednesday.

If the budget is not approved this time, “It could take a lot longer to plows the roads in winter. And we may have to have discussions with the school administration about when we should plow the school parking lots. This has the potential to cause a lot of trouble down the road,” he said.

The focus on the health, safety and welfare of residents also includes “their ability to get to work and to make money.”

Maniscalco said he and Director of Finance Jeffrey M. Jylkka have had conversations about the possible impact on the Triple-A bond rating. If the town loses that rating, “it could have a potentially costly impact,” the manager said.

“That’s real. The ($18.9 million) Town Hall/police department building we are going to be building could cost a whole lot more should the town sees its rating reduced,” he said.

The budget impasse is also having an effect on morale in Town Hall, Maniscalco acknowledged.

In the wake of the approval of the education budget, the Board of Education awarded some members of the school administration hefty raises. By contrast, “The employees here in this building who aren’t members of a union haven’t seen a raise.”

For his part, Maniscalco did not take a raise this year. However, the hiring freeze also affects him.

“There’s a vacancy here in my office. I don’t want to have to lay people off. But people need to wake up and look at what this is about,” he said.

To underscore that point, Maniscalco recalled a quote from Abraham Lincoln: “You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.”

File photo East Hampton officials count the budget vote totals following the second vote at the middle school June 12.