NORTH SMITHFIELD – Councilors scheduled to set a municipal budget for the upcoming fiscal year on Monday, June 10 opted instead to delay any decisions until Monday, June 24, with members stating that information needed to complete the process had only been provided that day.
The decision came despite objections from Councilor John Beauregard, who noted that many in attendance for the meeting were expecting the board to act.
“We’ve got all the department heads here,” said Beauregard. “Everybody’s here and ready to go. We don’t put it off for another week.”
The delay was initiated by Council President Kimberly Alves, who noted that prior year figures and a list of reserves had only recently been provided.
“We really haven’t had a chance to look at it,” Alves said.
Councilor Paulette Hamilton said moving forward would not provide time to look critically at the data, and was in violation of the board’s rules.
“Our rules are, we don’t accept anything the night of if we’re expected to make a decision,” Hamilton said.
The decision to delay voting followed a contentious hearing where some councilors questioned projected revenue figures in proposals for the upcoming fiscal year provided by the Budget Committee and the town administrator, noting that several departments seemed to show unrealistic expectations.
“Almost every department here is so overstated,” said Alves, addressing Finance Director Antony St. Onge. Alves noted that the figures were similar to the prior year’s projected revenues, and that with only one month remaining in the fiscal year, “a lot of them haven’t even hit 50 or 60 percent.”
St. Onge responded that he does not set the departments’ budgets.
“The departments will present their budgets and its not up to me to decide whether they will or will not earn something or expense something,” said St. Onge. “I just facilitate it.”
Councilor Douglas Osier reacted with anger to the response.
“But Tony, isn’t that your job?” Osier asked. “That’s your job to make sure that we hit the revenues and monitor the budget, right? You are where the buck stops in the budget process.”
As St. Onge started to reply, Osier continued.
“You can be rude to other people. You will not be rude to me,” Osier said. “You will show me the same respect that I show you meeting after meeting.”
“If we miss our revenue, that is a problem,” Osier continued. “That means we can’t fund the rest of the expenses which mean that your going to potentially have to send out a fifth quarter tax roll. I don’t want to be a council that does that.”
“For you to say you don’t know… you asked for a 17 percent increase on your salary,” said Osier. “You should know. Compensation should be tied to the experience and the job knowledge. When you say you don’t know the revenues that a department may bring in, that’s a problem.”
Alves gave examples of her concerns, noting that Municipal Court had projected $75,000 in revenue for the current year, but had only received $48,000 as of May 31.
“How are we going to get to that number?” she asked St. Onge.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “I don’t work for the municipal court. I guide the departments, the TA and the budget committee through the budget process. I provide input where I can on historical data. I don’t know the proceedings of municipal court.”
St. Onge noted that town department heads submit their projected revenue numbers early in the year, and that he has no authority to change the figures.
“I’m not in their department,” he said.
Budget Committee Vice Chairperson Christine Earley agreed that it was an issue of timing – and that the finance director did not have the authority to update the figures on documents that were before the council this week.
“Tony can’t just go and say, ‘those numbers are off, we’re going to redo them,'” said Earley. “I guess the only way to really address this is for the Town Council to make the correction.”
Earley said that in future years, the council could ask budgeters to continue their work right up until the annual vote in June if they wanted to get more accurate figures in terms of actuals from the prior fiscal year.
“I don’t know how we fix this and how we can change that process,” Earley said. “We just do it so far in advance that it’s hard to predict.”
As an example, Earley noted that real estate sales have been slow in recent months, leading to fewer transactions and a decrease in Town Hall revenue from recording fees.
“It’s an imperfect process,” she said. “We’re trying to predict what it will be in June. It’s hard.”
Resident Michael Clifford said that when he was on the Budget Committee, the group used a simple calculation to determine how much revenue had been received each month to the date, multiplying that by 12.
“This is the administrator’s budget,” said Clifford. “I understand what Tony’s trying to say. It isn’t his budget. It’s simple to calculate. I would like to hear from the administrator why he didn’t do that.”
Beauregard said councilors could easily use the same method to update the figures and proceed that evening.
“This is the eighth time I’ve done this,” he said. “We were elected for a specific reason. Sometimes it’s not fun, so we roll up our sleeves and we get this done. We can go one line at a time. That’s what we’re here for. Get it done.”
Beauregard voted in the minority with Councilor Claire O’Hara against the decision to continue the public hearing and budget adoption to Monday, June 24.
“We have until the end of the month,” said Alves.
Reading from a prepared statement, Osier gave early implication that when the council does take up the document, there could be major changes to the fiscal plans currently on the table. Versions submitted by Town Administrator Paul Zwolenski and the Budget Committee vary by less than $9,000, with roughly $53,000,000 in proposed expenditures.
“This budget is just a status quo budget,” said Osier. “It hinders our ability to change and lacks accountability and flexibility. It’s about surviving and not thriving.”
Osier noted that in the proposals, no money was set aside for infrastructure projects such as Halliwell and the police station.
“We’re caught in the trap of funding the same all stuff over and over,” he said.
To Beauregard, Osier added, “I would normally agree with you. I would be willing to be here all night.”
He added, however, “I don’t know how we set an expense budget if we don’t know what the revenue is.”
Beauregard described the decision to delay as, “typical,” for the current council.
“This is ridiculous,” he said.
Wow! After reading the article and watching the meeting it shows NS is very weak in financial knowledge and experience from the town administrator, department heads, finance director, and some of the town council members. The meeting shows a lack of concern for the taxpayers and is more about just approving a budget that lacks any improvements and just pays employees more money. This all started 5 to 8 years ago when the town began to not fund maintenance and just paid employees more and reduced the work schedule and accountability. Now the finance directors job is to adjust the budget as necessary and work with and inform department heads of budget changes. This is the administrators budget not the department heads budget. If I was on the town council I would reduce each department’s budget according to be as fiscally responsible as possibly. We should have 11 months of actual spending and I would use an updated FY24 projection to guide the FY25 budget and I would not use a stale FY24 budget. For example the school department is always $500K favorable so I would reduce that budget, the police department increase in too high, and the finance director performance justifies a zero increase. Now if the finance director leaves it would be doing the town a favor. The budget increase/tax increase is way too high. Providence and Cranston have no tax increase and NS is currently looking at more than 3%. Can you imagine what the tax increase would have been if the police station was approved. I had one town councilman tell me that the budget will just increase by 4% each year and I will just need to accept that fact. It’s time to elect more experienced council members and appoint a more creative impactful budget committee instead of appointed yes members.
Wow. Ironically Mike Clifford said the same exact thing at the meeting last Monday …..
It’s getting old Michael, sorry JT….
And you can only elect who from who has the ambition to run! Perhaps you should take a long hard look in the mirror as to why volunteers on boards, people to run for elected positions and also quality candidates don’t want anything to do with this town. Nuff said.
Wow, ironically anybody with a background in accounting or budgeting would make a similar comment to the one posted by JT.
It’s getting old TEDNS, sorry, I mean NHA…
Unlike you, I never feel the need to use a cowardly acronym when I comment. Actually I already posted an article about this budget presentation on my Cliff Notes page. In the event that you missed it, here’s a link. https://bit.ly/3XsYtXv
As a person that watched the meeting, I am in complete agreement with Ms Alves, Hamilton and Mr. Osier. If you watch the meeting, neither Mr. Beauregard nor Mrs. O’Hara even shuffled their papers to make it look they knew what the budget contained. They have only rubber stamped everything done by Mr Zwolenski and Mr. St. Onge. God help us. Can you imagine if we had to send out a 5th quarter tax bill due to incompetence? And the audacity to request a 17% raise!