BRATTLEBORO -- Town staff presented their suggested budget cuts to the Select Board Tuesday night in an effort to keep taxes from going up more than 20 percent next year.
The 58 possible reductions totaled a little more than $3 million, but the board balked at a number of them. After spending three hours going over the items, the board agreed to 40 of the suggestions, but kept a number of others, resulting in a cut of $2 million from the $26.5 million Fiscal Year 26 budget offered by Town Manager John Potter in November.
"Each department took a hard look at the base budget to determine how a reduction could be implemented," wrote Potter in a memo presented to the board. "Some of the principles were to minimize service reductions to residents, focus staff savings at the vacancy level, uphold recent Select Board initiatives to the extent possible, avoid adjustments that would require re-opening collective bargaining, and try not to build future budget challenges."
A little more than $21.6 million needed to be raised by taxes in the proposed budget, a 22.5 percent increase over the current year.
"I want to applaud the people for the work," said Daniel Quipp, chairman of the Select Board. "It was really hard work that they were asked to do and work that I'm sure was somewhat demoralizing."
He also said no one "can be really happy" about the suggested cuts, but "22-percent tax increase is really hard for me to stomach."
Quipp pointed out that the main drivers to increases in the budget include additional police funding as demanded by the community and town-wide trash collection.
The list presented by the Town Manager is intended to present "the least harmful way of reducing the budget," said Quipp.
Quipp noted this is a first pass at the suggested reductions and he expected there will be further deliberation that includes public and Town Meeting Representative participation.
"I'm sure other people have other things to say," he said.
The Select Board will continue its discussion on the budget on Jan. 7, followed by discussions with Town Meeting Representatives on Jan. 8 and 9. The Select Board is required to adopt the budget by the end of January and Town Meeting Reps will consider it on March 22.
In the base budget, the estimated municipal taxes per $100,000 was $1,773. With the 40 cuts agreed to by the Board Tuesday night the rate is lowered to $1,610 per $100,000.
The 58 suggested cuts include reducing the 4 percent cost-of-living adjustments to all staff members to 3 percent, resulting in a savings of more than $111,000 and deferring the hiring of an emergency services data analyst ($72,000) and an IT coordinator ($94,000).
The items also included suggestions such as using unspent grant funds on capital needs, retiring notes on equipment purchases early to save long-term interest, increasing planning department fees, cutting down on office supplies, and deferring maintenance at the municipal center, and the fire stations.
Board member Franz Reichsman warned board members that using one-time funds for recurring expenses wasn't a wise policy, as is deferring something you will have to pay for later.
"Basically, what we're doing here is we're spending the fund balance," he said. "And it's not wrong to do that but it's not a replicable source of money."
The suggestions went as far as eliminating the annual summer picnic and winter holiday breakfast the town hosts for the staff ($2,500), leaf collection ($20,000), and a closure of the town's swimming pool in 2025 ($66,000).
Board member Richard Davis also said it's his feeling the town shouldn't be eliminating employee recognition events when they are being asked to "tighten their belts."
"I agree with Richard about the miserly nature of reducing employee recognition and appreciation organization-wide in a year where we're asking people to accept some lower colas and to not do some maintenance on the buildings where they work," said Quipp. "I think the savings of $2,500 is not worth it for the loss of good feeling amongst our staff."
The suggestions also included cuts to the library budget, reducing expenditures on books and deferring computer maintenance while increasing fees for non-resident use of the library.
Other things that were on the original list included eliminating collection and reducing human services contributions to 1.4 percent, from the 2 percent authorized by Town Meeting Representatives in 2024, of the general fund budget.
Town staff also suggested using uncommitted special funds of $141,000 be set aside for ambulance purchases, rather than asking taxpayers for that money in 2025, and another $161,000 to go towards a new backhoe.
The town could save $11,000 by eliminating its ASL service and replacing it with automatic captioning, by deferring intersection work at Williams Street and Western Avenue and Guilford Street and Western Avenue, and could raise another $10,000 by increasing the ice rink fees by $1.
While the list calls for the elimination of trash collection at $420,000, it could implement a pay-as-you-throw system that would net the town $309,000 in revenue.
Another $50,000 could be saved by reducing bus service with another $107,000 saved by delaying the rehiring of the town's finance director.
Reducing the intersection budget, eliminating spending on bicycle-related infrastructure and slowing down the installation of things like flashing-crosswalk lights.
"There's a whole group of people out there that are passionate about doing whatever we can to improve bicycle safety, but I think this is one of those items where we have to step back and look at the whole budget," said Davis. "I don't want to eliminate it, I just want to defer."
Peter "Fish" Case, owner of Burrow's Specialized Sports, said he was not in favor of eliminating funds that make the roads safer for pedestrians and bikers.
"We're kind of sort of talking about human life here," he said. "I don't like putting a price tag on people who use our streets and I think that's what we're doing here."
Board members agreed to reduce the $50,000 proposed for traffic safety measures to $25,000, but it was met with resistance.
"If we don't try to keep these improvements going, we're never going to get there, and it's really almost a drop in the bucket," said Prudence MacKinney.
Tony Duncan was OK with cutting the budget in half, but urged the board and the town to commit more resources in the future.
"We have to make real changes," he said.
"People aren't comfortable biking because they don't feel safe," said Kathleen White.