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Health & Fitness

A View from the Right: Village Budget Review 3 Months Later

Almost five months ago, a majority of the Village Trustees stepped out and approved the first Budget that cut spending in many years to the benefit of the Port Chester Taxpayer.

 

Almost five months ago, a majority of the Village Trustees stepped out and approved the first Budget that cut spending in many years to the benefit of the Port Chester Taxpayer. While this was just one of the campaign promises that were kept, it also ushered in a new sense of operational expectations and responsibilities upon the Village Manager and the various Department Heads.

The primary message of this new Budget was that we expect you (department managers) to run your respective department with an eye on cutting waste, cutting unnecessary spending and significantly reducing the overtime that has been a hallmark of the previous year’s operating results.

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While all of this resembles a basic business approach, it also is working on behalf of the Taxpayer, which is what we were elected to do. However, Mayor Pilla remained stubbornly against any cuts to the Village Managers Budget that originally called for a 14.7% increase and was clearly in the minority on the Budget process.

As a part of the approved Budget, the Majority called for a Budget review after 3 months of operations which was scheduled for this Monday, September 19th, 2011 during the regularly scheduled Board of Trustee (BOT) meeting at 7pm, 350 North Main Street, in the Court Room.

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Two weeks ago we were notified that the Manager will not be at this upcoming meeting and while the Manager will be representing all the Village Departments other than Police & Fire, the Mayor did agree that we can continue without him for Police & Fire and the Village Treasurer has delivered the first quarter reports for BOT review. These reports do not forecast a good future outcome and in fact are showing that there has been no change in the management of the Police & Fire Departments or movement to our goals.

Last year they significantly over spent their overtime budgets which lead the BOT to reduce the available funds for this year creating an expectation that our department heads would better manage their department staffing through better scheduling.

So how has the Police & Fire Department operations been doing so far? Looking only at the Budget categories for regular and overtime pay, not so good!

Regular pay has been on track or lower, but for the first 3 months this fiscal year they have run over 37% for the Police & 46% for the Fire when they should have not exceeded 25% if their overtime is incurred at a balanced rate throughout the year.

It is clear to me that something in either the budget process or the management process, or both processes has gone wrong along the way. It is the responsibility of the BOT, beginning with this Monday’s meeting to begin the process of learning where the failures have occurred and take steps to help of department heads as to how the corrections will be made to achieve our goals this year while making them last for the many years to come.

I hope the Mayor will be on the same page as the Trustee’s in this process and not give us another filibuster that we got at the last public hearing on the proposed Certificate of Occupancy amendment. This time it directly is the Taxpayers money and we have to cut the runaway spending of the last 10 years.

 

Bart A. Didden

Trustee, Village of Port Chester

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