Morristown starts third budget at loggerheads over pay

“This is a cost of doing business, and the only business that we’re in is service,” board member Chris Palermo said during Monday’s board meeting. “If you don’t have employees, you don’t get service.”

However, the board’s loyalty to town employees notwithstanding, its first two budgets this year have been defeated by large margins.

“Somehow, this board has to get together and get a budget that fits everybody, and those people that voted ‘no’ somehow have got to be convinced that it’s right and that they can afford it,” Tom Cloutier said. “The only way to do that is to lower this budget.”

Morristown’s first proposed operating budget of $10.1 million was defeated March 7 on a vote of 1,441-391, a margin of defeat of more than three-to-one. Its second proposed budget of $9.4 million was defeated June 6, 1,003-583.

A third budget vote likely won’t occur until September, giving the town scant time to have a budget in place by the time taxes are due in mid-November.

Morristown’s non-unionized employees are given salary increases based on similar cost-of-living and step formulas as the town’s much larger population of unionized workers.

Palermo said the town’s longevity pay policy only applies to a handful of town employees — mainly the heads of the departments. He said, as an example, if the town were to get rid of that policy, there would be highway department employees who make more than their supervisors, since the unionized employees have negotiated their annual cost of living formulas as well as annual step raises based on years on the job.

When it comes to the tax implications of the pay raises, Palermo said he and others crunched the numbers and determined that a person with a home worth $500,000 would only save $30 on their tax bill if the town got rid of the raises. He said the board ought not “sacrifice” employees who have an agreement with the town “to save a couple of dollars on an average home in Morrisville.”

“I think it’s a terrible message for the community to send to their employees,” Palermo said.

Board member Don McDowell added, “Do we pay them less because we can?”

It’s not just the selectboard that is insistent on paying non-union employees based on the union formulas — it’s the union itself.

In a June 23 letter to the board, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 300, which represents unionized Morristown employees, pressed the town to honor its “long-standing practice and policy” — it was first adopted in 2006 and re-affirmed last summer, according to board chair Judy Bickford.

“The Town has an obligation to its employees to establish and sustain productive working relationships and a productive working environment free from the current political climate that currently fills the air in the Town,” union representative Jeffrey Wimette wrote. “The Town has an obligation to develop and sustain reasonable and competitive wages and benefits for the employees who have committed their livelihood for the benefit of the Town. Doing anything less will destroy or injure the fruits of the commitment between the Town and the employees.”

Board member Travis Sabataso acknowledged that it is too late to re-write the longevity pay policy without telling the non-union employees they aren’t getting the raises they’d been assured, but after this budget cycle is over — whenever that may be — the board could add some guardrails to the policy.

He said while the cost-of-living increase, based on last year’s consumer price index, is more than 8 percent, and it was 5 percent the year before, it’s a measure of inflation that is not constant. He said there have been years when the cost of living has only gone up 1 percent, or not at all.

“It makes more sense to implement a floor and a cap, whatever that may be,” Sabataso said.

Ed Loewenton said it was a “specious argument” to talk about pay raises in conjunction with someone’s tax bill. He said giving someone a raise just because they’ve been there a certain number of years is an exercise in “static bureaucracy,” and ignores employee performance.

“That’s how a car salesman sells you into more bells and whistles,” he said.

Cloutier noted Morristown has a significant population of low-income residents, and they are not willing to pay for the types of budgets that have thus far been proposed.

Julia Compagna said she has a family member who would have lost the home she has lived in for 50 years if the budget had been approved.

“There’s a community of elderly people, disabled people, fixed income people for whom this is not tenable unless we find a better path forward, where we can all cinch our belts in, suck it up for a little while, forego other things, other discretionary things, and get over this hurdle,” Compagna said.

The public will have plenty of time to offer opinions on budget No. 3, with the selectboard committing to meeting every Monday in July to work on the figures — both as part of regular meetings and in budget-only work sessions.

At that pace, the board anticipates a third budget vote in early September.

Banking the budget

The new fiscal year begins Saturday without a budget in place, but the town will still have to pay the expenses needed to function. To that end, it will likely have to resort to credit.

Morrisville-based Union Bank offered the town a one-year $2.15 million loan to pay “current expenses.” According to town clerk Sara Haskins, the town normally takes out a tax anticipation loan from the bank each year — taxes aren’t collected until Nov. 15 — and this is “basically the same thing, different name.”

The selectboard agreed to take out a loan for $2,148,800 with a June 28, 2024, payoff deadline.