Town gets jump on planning

By Scott Merzbach
Staff Writer

Published on August 29, 2008

Department heads in Amherst will meet with the Select Board in late October so policy recommendations can be crafted and given to the town manager as he prepares next year's budget.

The Select Board this week tentatively scheduled a meeting for Oct. 25 at 8 a.m. at Town Hall at which board members will ask questions of those who run the various departments.

Town Manager Larry Shaffer said department heads will be happy to talk about how their missions are being compromised by ongoing funding issues. "You're going to hear quite a story, frankly," Shaffer said.

The Select Board process will be in conjunction with work done by the Finance Committee, which makes its recommendations on spending initiatives to Town Meeting and informs the town manager of the town's financial conditions. The Finance Committee will also meet with individual department heads over a period of weeks starting early next year.

Shaffer said he will follow both the policy guidelines of the Select Board, which are established in the town government act, and the advice from the Finance Committee.

"We try to deliver a budget where your goals are achievable, with some small tweaking," Shaffer said.

But he noted that "10,000 details" are examined during this process and that the guidelines can't always be evenly divided and shared between departments.

Last year, the Select Board issued policy recommendations to maintain funding of human service agencies and the War Memorial Pool, both of which were eliminated in Shaffer's budget. Both items were later put back into the budget, despite being lower priorities on Shaffer's restoration list.

But in 2007 the Select Board didn't have the kind of formal meetings with department heads it expects to hold this year. Board member Stephanie O'Keeffe said having these meetings will allow the board to address specific issues, such as the establishment of a revolving fund at Jones Library. O'Keeffe said the Select Board could help facilitate a resolution to this issue and allow the library to collect fines and use these fines toward its budget.

Shaffer, too, will meet with department heads about their needs. Though he will not submit his budget to the Select Board until Jan. 16, Shaffer said he appreciates the board's involvement in the process, especially with the beginning of an expected challenging stretch of years in properly funding departments.

In fact, the budget he prepared this year may look relatively simple by comparison.

"In many ways we'll look back at this year fondly as being a good year," Shaffer said.