Can we afford these out of control budgets?

This was posted by Bob Davis Budget Committee Member and I approved this posting: Oct 28, 2008, The Budget Committee once gain fails to cut any serious money from the town budget. They did however cut a little money from the Selectmen’s proposed increases. Tonight it was Sharon Haley’s turn to discuss the Financial Dept’s budget. Last year her budget was $115,223.00. She came before us tonight, requesting an increase of $12,602.00 in her budget, which would have brought the total to $127,825.00. The budget committee, after a small debate, voted to cut $4,182.00 which includes the dept's performance bonus, bringing the new total budget to $123,643.00. This is actually another increase in town spending of $8,420 for this dept. These are not real honest budget cuts. What I discussed with the dept head, what everyone over looks, which doesn’t show up in her line item budget, is the hidden costs under the line item called insurance.

The accounting supervisor, Sharon Haley, receives a $43,474.00 salary. However, when we add in the hidden benefits of ; 3 weeks paid vacation, 10 paid sick days, 12 paid holidays, medical, dental and vision benefits and the cost of living raise and performance bonus she's received, her pay actually totals out around $55,557.42 (using 2006 -2007 stats). Now the accounting assistant, Amy Bond, receives a salary of $34,758.00. If we add her 2 weeks vacation, the 10 paid sick days, the 12 paid holidays and the cost of medical, dental, vision insurance and her raise and performance bonus, we come up with an actual total salary of $55,404.60.
Now as you can plainly see, the real budget numbers of the Financial Dept. are $160,554.42, not $123,643.00 and all of this is for just two people, in a downstairs office. We're not done yet, we still have 4 more offices to go. To make real budget cuts, I called for a cut of Amy Bond's hours and pay making the assistant job part-time. This job was done for years with one full time employee, Irene Ethridge, and a part-timer. In all fairness, the work load has increased a little; but can still be carried out the old way. There is no real need for having two full time employees and it's costing us a substantial amount of tax payer money to boot. We are headed for very hard times, with all of these increases; because if we don't act responsibly and really start cutting out the pork, next year people are going to be taxed out of their homes.
So what if the employees have to work a little harder and buckle down on these expense items, we all have to tighten our belts in bad economic times. This is letting the tax payers down and increasing the risk that some more of our neighbors and friends may lose their homes or have to move away because they can no longer afford to live in Winchester. I ask my fellow board members where is the fiscal responsibility that we are entrusted to carry out to protect the citizens of Winchester from continued over spending ? I didn't see any again, at last night's meeting.