CHESTER – Community residents gathered at Chester Town Hall last night to voice their collective opinion on whether or not to grant permission to the Selectboard to transfer $65,000 from the town’s stabilization fund in order to balance it’s budget for the rest of fiscal year.
With a two-thirds majority needed to transfer the funds, residents were in almost unanimous, though somewhat begrudging, support, voting 24-1 for the move, with questions raised as to why the town needed to take such a drastic measure to balance the books.
“It’s difficult to know what happened, but it appears incorrect information was given,” said Interim Town Administrator Joe Kellogg. “Every year, the state certifies how much free cash we have. That’s essentially from the prior year, whatever is left… we’re allowed to spend that the following fiscal year. The state certified that we had $83,000 available for fiscal year 2014.”
Kellogg was brought back as town administrator after the resignation of former town administrator Ed McDonald last year.
He explained the reasoning for the proposed transfer as being a large-scale case of the town, which operates on a $3 million budget, basically overdrafting it’s checking account.
“Over the past year, we’ve had various town meetings, and the town did not vote to spend $83,000… It voted to spend several hundred-thousand dollars plus. If you try to write checks for $100 and you only have $55, you’re short.”
Kellogg said that he wasn’t sure how the errors were made, but chose to take the opportunity to stress the severity of the situation to the assembled residents.
“The reality is, if we cannot balance our budget, we will not be able to send out tax bills, and thats how we run the town,” he said. “The other option is to cut the budget.”
He stated confidently that the town’s stabilization fund currently has $230,000 in it, before adding that, if the vote didn’t pass, another meeting would be scheduled in several weeks to cut the budget, which he said would mean shutting down the Town Hall and likely laying off an employee from the Highway Department.
There was some confusion amongst the assembled residents as to where exactly the $65,000 went and who was responsible, to which Selectboard Chairman Don Ellershaw reiterated that the money wasn’t misplaced, just mismanaged, and that the person believed to have made the errors is no longer employed by the town.
“It’s not that this money went missing. We just need to write checks to cover the money we’ve spent,” he said.
When asked of whether an audit would take place soon, Selectman John Baldasaro said that there will be one next year, and that, once the budget is balanced and the state certifies the tax rate, money will be replaced in the fund.
“We are anticipating that there will be enough free cash this year to put back into the stabilization fund,” he said.
Baldasarro also stated that the town is currently interviewing for a new town administrator, while the interim man fielded questions from townspeople about where the town would be if the budget wasn’t in the red.
“If the mistakes were never made, you would have a balanced budget,” Kellogg said. “But some of the projects from the past year wouldn’t have been approved.”
Following the decisive vote, Ellershaw said the decision made sense.
“It’s just fixing the checkbook balance,” he said. “The town voted to fund projects, the balance never got corrected, and now we have to get it back in the black.”
When questioned about the identity of the now-former employee whose error ended up putting the town in the red, Ellershaw said he couldn’t comment.
“Once the next audit is done, we’ll know for sure,” he said.
Regarding the search for a new town administrator, Ellershaw said that a selectmen’s meeting that was held prior to the vote went well and that the process is moving along.
“We’re reviewing for the position and we’re looking to hire within the next two or three weeks,” he said.
