Town Budgets Mild Winter
Think of all the surplus in the municipal budgets with no snowplowing and unusually warm weather this winter reducing heating costs. How soon will the taxpayers... never mind.
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Unused funds would be rolled over into next years budgets under most cases...
Not sure if the City works like that, but all the towns should. The budget you approve is not the amount to be raised in taxation all the time, many times it is top line and does not include offsets. |
Many department heads spend every dollar allotted in their annual budget and return little or nothing to the general fund at the end of the fiscal year. They do it so that it will look like the entire amount was needed to keep the amount for the next year from being reduced. It would not surprise me if DPW heads do the same thing after a mild winter.
I was on a call fire department for 25 years and every end of budget year saw a flurry of purchases, many that were not absolutely necessary. Some things that were purchased were not needed at all, but the money was spent anyway. |
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You are absolutely right. They don't want their budgets to be reduced for the next year so they find a way to spend what was alloted for the present year. It starts at the federal government and goes right down to local. |
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:laugh::laugh::laugh::laugh: Indeed!! Thanks though, I deleted one of them because I didn't realize I posted twice. |
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Our road manager generally goes before the BoS at the end of spring, and requests that left over funds be allocated to specific road repairs and material from unforeseen spring related damage. |
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My experience with State and Federal governments is different. In the off chance we had money left over in the National Guard (fiscal year ending September 30th), we had strict instructions to spend EVERY penny for fear of not being allocated a similar or greater amount next year. This meant that if there was a conference in Hawaii, you had a green light to attend. The thought of giving the money back to the treasury wasn't there. It would be interesting to know how Laconia treats this type of situation. |
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For those that don't know, the NH General Court has a group called the Legislative Budget Assistant. They do audits of each department, and give legislators an analysis on the fiscal impact of proposed legislation. Less well known is that they do "performance audits" to see if departments really need all their employees, or if they need more in places where the legislature needs to authorize more and if existing laws need to be updated. Little known, but valuable service. Note that, in our citizen legislature we have a large number of experts from doctors to carpenters with hands on experience, where many states fill their legislatures with lawyers. I'm proud of how we manage ourselves in NH. |
We also have TransparentNH.
It is a bit wonky as you have to understand the buying process that goes into much of what you are seeing... |
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I think most towns have audits but that doesn't prevent a department from buying a lot of stuff ahead if they see their budget is below expectations. If you don't think it happens you are naive and your town (or school or state or fed )is indeed called Shangrai La. When I personally witnessed it, I never would have realized if they hadn't told me what they were doing.
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Audit purposes
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The irony is, a politician pledges to keep a sharp eye on the budget, but when s/he is up for re-election, the voters want to hear that s/he built them a new bridge and brought in 400 new jobs. |
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You had to be told... |
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Massachusetts is a bit different..
I retired 4 years ago as Superintendent of the DPW in my town (34 years).
In Mass, the laws regarding Snow and Ice expenditures are very strict. S&I funds are appropriated separately at the Annual Town Meeting in the Spring. There are pretty stiff restrictions on the types of expenditures that can be made. Obviously, Sand, Salt, Liquid Calcium, Cutting Edges, Repairs to S&I related equipment, Hired Contractors, and payroll overtime were considered appropriate expenditures. There are others, of course, but they had to be directly related to Snow and Ice removal. When the Town is audited annually, close scrutiny is given to these expenses. Any surplus funds are turned back in. They either revert to what is called “Free Cash” which can only be appropriated at a Town Meeting or they can be transferred to other municipal accounts that may be experiencing a shortfall, again, only by a vote of Town Meeting. The Department of Revenue (DOR) has rules about S&I funding. A town must appropriate an equal to or greater amount of S&I funding each year in order to over expend S&I appropriations during a bad winter and funding runs out. This allows the town to carry forward those extra costs into the next fiscal year if necessary. BT |
As an example of waste, I may have the year wrong but this occurred 10 to 15 years ago in the town where I was a Call Firefighter. We had excellent equipment and the last two pumpers bought were purchased in the previous 10 years. We really didn't need anything newer.
The Federal Government had a one year program that if you bought one fire truck you would get the second one paid for with Federal dollars. The Chief convinced the Selectmen that the deal was too good to pass up so we got two new trucks that we really didn't need. There are many available examples of Government waste, both in equipment and personnel. In my opinion, more of a private industry perspective is needed in the Government. Yet, we keep electing the same career politicians, many of whom are not qualified to run a Dairy Queen. |
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I am sure the department heads would be very frugal if they got to keep the money like we do when building homes. They act like a non-profit... so using a profit-driven model as a comparison isn't really accurate. |
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In all forms of government there is waste. Anyone that doesn't believe so or believes they live in a community that is better then the rest is fooling themselves. The question is how visible is the waste, and can it be sheltered from sight.
Sometimes the waste in way of capital expenditures, sometimes it is in the way of personal that is not needed... in the end it isn't the purpose of an audit to point out the waste, Audits on ensure that the money was spent for the items it was appropriated for, and that all the money is accounted for. If 100% of every towns budget was audited I would be surprised. Auditing is often done at a high level... leaving plenty of low level ways to hide and misuse money... |
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It would show in inventory. And in a for-profit, having that level of inventory would need to exist for a good reason or cut into profits through a carry charge.
Even with what I do... mostly windows and doors pre-paid for, or at least a 50% deposit... if it sits here for more than a week (as it shows in our system)... I get an immediate email wondering what I am doing about it. If I pre-buy stock inventory... it shows on my inventory. And the system shows how many days that I am ahead on inventory. That triggers an email. Even purchasing from a distributor that is not our primary supplier triggers an email. I do that usually to avoid shipping costs on a single item or two that I can attach to a larger order that will ship free. It isn't like years ago when everything was a piece of paper that could be simply filed away never to be seen again. Our new system is even tighter... I get the email the next day. For department heads... any question that goes unanswered can result in the loss of a job. The BPD couldn't thoroughly explain why it needed more money, and their contract was not passed at town meeting. The Budget Committee couldn't fully express why they needed more money... and so that budget didn't pass. With Board Meetings being taped, and the internet, there is a lot more control over the towns that have slowly modernized. SB2 also got rid of the cliques controlling the outcomes. |
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Who is responsible?
I don't think dept. heads spend like crazy in the fourth quarter. But certainly the BOS or Town Council can move money around from one line item to another. Keeping taxes stable, using such tools as the (required) six year capital improvement plan is just good management. An unstable tax rate can impact bond ratings and may make business owners less likely to expand if there is no predictability to their future expenses.
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We got hit with a little unexpected from the late storm.
Some spring ''repairs'' were already in process. |
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Government waste is always a topic of debate around here.
Enhancing lifestyle can enhance the tax base... but there is always offsets. Even investments in industrial/commercial development have not stood up... basically because the players all don't have a full understanding of the issues at hand. |
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