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Houlton Hacks Away at '06 Town Budget Councilors Approve $7.7M Plan With Cuts to Police, Public Works, Administration

Posted on: Wednesday, 8 February 2006, 15:00 CST

By JEN LYNDS; OF THE NEWS STAFF

HOULTON - Councilors were busy trimming late last week, as they made their final cuts to the more than $7.7 million fiscal year 2006 municipal budget.

Despite the insistence of Houlton Police Chief Daniel Soucy that his department needed to catch up on training, councilors chopped a total of $30,000 off his new budget.

At a preliminary budget hearing last month, councilors proposed taking $26,000 from the police department's more than $1.1 million budget, maintaining that the department should be able to cut back on overtime now that it is fully staffed.

At last week's hearing, Soucy asked them to reconsider their decision.

Saying that there were still challenges facing the community that had to be dealt with by police, the chief said that his department had been starved of training because of past budget issues. He insisted that now was the time to get his officers properly trained.

Councilor Dale Flewelling made a motion to reinstate the $26,000, but it was quickly shot down.

Councilor Carl Lord said at the meeting that he still thought there was a lot of "fat" in the police budget to cut.

When the group discussed taking another $4,000 out of the budget, Councilor Paul Cleary told the group that he did not want to see the money come out of the training line item.

"We've gone too long without training for a lot of the officers," he said.

The group eventually voted 4-2 to cut $30,000 from the police budget.

Chairman Paul Romanelli reiterated that he did not think that the cuts would affect public safety.

Money was also whittled away from the administration budget, after Lord suggested that $3,800 could be cut from various places.

A suggestion to make cuts to the fire department budget was defeated, and no changes were made to the budgets of the ambulance, grant writer/planning administrator or code enforcement departments.

The town's Public Works Department was not as fortunate. While Flewelling moved to restore some funding to the department that had been cut during the budget process, his proposal was defeated.

Councilor Phil Bernaiche suggested chopping $13,500 from the department, saying that the money could be taken from such areas as supplies, parts, outside services, rentals, telephone and safety equipment.

Town Manager Douglas Hazlett told the group that a lot of the categories in the public works budget were fixed costs. He reminded the group that the department's budget had only increased 3 percent over last year, and that included factoring in a huge increase in the price of road salt.

"I think that if you take out too much you are going to be in trouble," he cautioned.

Despite his admonition, councilors eventually voted 4-3 in favor of the cuts.

The budget becomes effective on Thursday.

Source: Bangor Daily News

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