The Finance Committee is reviewing the town administrator's proposed budget.

LANESBOROUGH, Mass. — The town administrator's proposed budgets for recreation, Council on Aging, and the American Legion were all subject to the Finance Committee' scrutiny Monday night.

 

The Finance Committee has begun pouring over Town Administrator Paul Sieloff's proposed $10.4 million budget. The Finance Committee will present their recommended budget for approval at town meeting.

 

Sieloff said he is currently about $18,000 away from having a proposed balanced budget because the school budgets both came in higher than he anticipated.

 

However, he says he will be finding areas to scale back the town budget to meet that target so the Finance Committee's responsibility isn't so much to make ends meet, but to review the numbers and check any line items they feel may be off.

 

"There aren't all these big questions marks out there... I've made some decisions," Sieloff said. "That amount, which is around $18,000, we will, over the next month or so, take a look at the numbers and tweak that to get there."

 

The Finance Committee had previously met with the heads of the Police, Highway, and Fire departments on their budgets, as did the Board of Selectmen. On Monday, the Finance Committee met with recreation, Council on Aging, and the American Legion.

 

The Recreation Committee budget is proposed to increase $500 for park maintenance for fiscal 2016, which Chairman Timothy Sorrell said was to help maintain Bill Laston Memorial Park, and up $321 to help with anticipated cost increases to run the soccer program. The budgets for those two are $25,571 for the Recreation Committee and $5,800 for the park maintenance.

 

"We've never seen an increase for parks maintenance after picking up another park," Sorrell said. 

 

Sorrell said the previous head of the soccer program had donated a lot of services to make that happen, such as painting the lines. Sorrell doesn't expect the next head to be able to do that. The Recreation Department does have a revolving account, which Sorrell said is at about $5,000. That is eyed to help with future capital repairs to items like scoreboards.

 

The Council on Aging is expected to see a $405 increase and a $475 increase for senior transportation. Those budgets are proposed at $18,556 and $33,400 respectfully. The Finance Committee questioned the use of the transportation vans and enrollment in the senior tax work-off program.

 

Chairman Al Terranova said the elementary school is cutting positions but seniors in the tax write-off program are still working in the school at a cost to the town. The program gives abatements for seniors who volunteer a certain amount of hours. There are 21 seniors in the program, receiving about $750 each off their tax bill. That equates to some $15,000 the town does not get in revenue.

 

"Is this critical to the workings of town?" Terranova asked.

 

He added that of the nine members of the Council on Aging board, eight are part of the program and he questioned if there was a conflict of interest. 

 

Sieloff countered both of those points, saying the jobs the seniors are doing is in a different category, such as stuffing envelopes, while the school was cutting teachers who were not needed. He said the town has trouble finding volunteers to sit on the Council on Aging board, so it isn't unexpected that the few people who will are also involved in the program.

 

"It isn't like we have a minor league of people wanting to be on the Council on Aging," Sieloff said.

 

Director Lorna Gayle said she could force the seniors to choose one or the other but that leaves vacancies. For example, three women who run a lunch program for seniors are also part of the Council on Aging board so either the lunch program is eradicated or there are three vacancies on the board.

 

Chairman Al Terranova questioned if there were ways to save money in the COA's transportation program.

Terranova also asked if the transportation vans are needed to be active eight hours a day, five days a week. At a cost of $33,400 to run it, Terranova asked if there could be savings there.

 

"The Council on Aging is one of the few agencies that haven't had any cuts in the 10 years since I've been on the Finance Committee," Terranova said.

 

Gayle said the vans, which are rented through a contract with the Berkshire Regional Transit Authority, are used to transport seniors to the lunch program, doctor's appointments, programs through the senior center and Brien Center, and shopping. The majority of the riders are elderly, widowed women in their 80s who do not have family in the area, Gayle said.

 

"Those 41 riders are responsible for more than 3,000 transportation trips a year," Gayle said, adding that the senior population is increase and so is demand. "I've gotten really strict with people making reservations two days in advanced because it has been too busy."

 

While Terranova may have been looking for savings, committee member Ronald Tinkham suggested the COA look to expand and offer more programming for the younger seniors. Gayle only works 18 hours so the time to operate such programs are limited, Sieloff countered.

 

Meanwhile, the Finance Committee continued to question the town's payments to the American Legion. The $5,500 allocated helps the American Legion post to run a food pantry program. However, the program is available to all communities and the Finance Committee asked why other towns aren't pitching in to help. 

 

"There is nobody else in Berkshire County supporting the cost," Tinkham said. "We, the town of Lanesborough, are subsidizing the costs when we aren't the only people involved in it."

 

George Himmel, commander of American Legion Post 446, said about 25 percent of the people who use the food pantry are residents and about 40 percent come from Pittsfield. The pantry set records in usage this year with more than 18,000 pounds of food being given out in one month.

 

"We are still contributing a conservative amount of a quarter of a million worth of food to whomever comes to us," Himmel said. "We operate under the country store model where we escort people around the floor and shelves and they get to pick what they want."

 

Fiance Committee member Christine Galib supported the legion's request. 

 

"It is $5,000 and it is doing all kinds of good," she said. "There are probably people from Lanesborough going to other towns and using their food pantries."

 

Last year, the Finance Committee attempted to cut the budget to maintain American Legion because the Legion owns the building and the board felt the town shouldn't be paying for a building it didn't own. In 1976, voters approved deeding the building to the American Legion but there are still questions of whether the town owned it a the time. Taxpayers have, in previous years, paid for capital projects on the building. 

 

Nonetheless, the Finance Committee said it will continue to support the Legion's $5,500 request.

 

The committee was expected to weigh in on the overall budget, and both Mount Greylock Regional and the elementary schools' budgets, but they were tabled for two weeks when the meeting ran three hours.