(Black text is mostly objective, red text is mostly subjective in nature.)

Tonight was the last meeting of FinCom before Town Meeting. (FinCom meets for 30 minutes before every town meeting session).

First up was Superintendant Nate Levenson and CFO Susan Mazzarella to review the proposed School budget. Levenson walked through the budget rationale for most of an hour. It was followed by an hour of questions and discussion. Special education costs and cost controls came up repeatedly. There are items that have hidden the cost somewhat over the years, including retirements. There was discussion of strategies to keep students in-district, and strategies to keep students from needing special education. If you’re interested in the budget process, I highly recommend that you follow the link and read the budget. It’s a good document with a lot of information. You can see how the goals drive the budget decisions, and the limitations that constrain it all.

Town Manager Brian Sullivan then presented three collective bargaining articles, one for the special town meeting and two for the regular town meeting. Police and fire are still unresolved. The agreements are done with COLA raises offset by increased copay for medication and doctor visits, and increased premium contribution of 25% of the cost for new employees.

FinCom received additional information and voted to approve the DPW position change that had been removed on Monday.

The collective bargaining articles were approved 16-1. I voted in favor of them. I think that the several-year trend of these deals is headed in the right direction. The trend is not sufficient to avert a severe budget crunch at the end of the 5-year plan; I think that is why the vote was not unanimous. On the other hand, we have to pay competitive wages if we’re going to get good employees. If we negotiate too hard, we’ll end up with a different set of problems related to low-quality work. The other way to control labor costs is simply to have fewer employees. We’re going to have to employ fewer people and try to do more with less. It’s easier and more efficient to pay a few skilled people more money than it is to pay a lot of less skilled people less money. And, in some cases, we’ll simply do less.

Last item was to vote on the school budget. Several members wanted to wait for the budget to be approved by the School Committee before voting it, particularly as the board composition is about to change. Other members noted that FinCom only can recommend a bottom line, and that bottom line was very unlikely to change. By 14-2-1 the proposed budget was recommended. Debate got a bit testy on this one. I think it was late and people were restless. Also there was some frustration that the school budget is so late. There hasn’t been enough time to question and scrutinize and flush out issues. I voted for it on the basis of the proposal. If the newly elected school committee does something crazy, we can change our recommendation.