The budget season is barely under way and already I feel a sense of deja vu while sitting through the Department of Public Works presentation. The highlights? DPW prepared a tabbed binder to go through the budget requests. It was very thick. They went through every tab, and no, I don’t mean the diet soda.

Ok the Public Works Dept Requested 18,234,000 which is an increase of $2 million or a 15.2 % increase.

Tom Hamilton recommend 16,056,066 or a 1.45% increase. He gave a quick explanation involving accounts for workers comp reduction, other general liability calculations reductions, (these are based on actual loss experience), and the Pubic works department praised the DPW for some success in reducing workers comp filings.

Hamilton stressed, that these are not programatic reductions, but that they represent allocation reductions.

It would have been helpful to see the packet, and apparently a fund summary was in packet that aggregates totals giving budgets versus actual summary of the budget by object code. Got that? But wait, this is the detail level that we weren’t getting from the BOE, so it’s a good thing right? Well, yes, once we got into snow, as in snow removal. And did you know that the almost the entire DPW budget is planned around snow removal? Who knew?

Well, let’s see. First the earth cooled. And then the dinosaurs came,
but they got too big and fat, so they all died and they turned into
oil. And then the Arabs came and they bought Mercedes Benzes. And
Prince Charles started wearing all of Lady Di’s clothes. I couldn’t
believe it.
- Airplane 2, The Sequel

A little levity there, because the meeting turned to the 12 year history of DPW employee counts. What did we learn from this excange, that there’s a lot of outsourcing and temporary labor resulting in this factoid that since 2002, 9 positions have been added.

Ahem, Exhibit D: General Ledger account Inquiry (budget and actual year to date as of 3/16/07 and by fiscal year to 1997.

Exhibit E: A Spreadsheet! Did you know that the move to all salt from a salt and sand mixture generated a cost benefit analysis savings 192k projected reduction? Me neither. My observation is that it kept the streets clear, and then there’s no messy sand to blow into the storm water drainage system, but at that point its not called sand, its become silt. If we don’t remove it, and wait a few million years it can become oil and … yes back to the program.

Exhibit F: Solid Waste, otherwise known as garbage. Big increase here. The tip fee is $76 per ton, plus a minimum of $8 per ton. We currently pay $70 a ton. CRA, CRA, isn’t that some waterbury agency that has been dogged by scandals? I’ll have to check into that.

Increase is due to a closeout reserve for the Shelton landfill. Fairfield County has not this received state allocation … if that allocation happens they will roll the tip fee back to $71/ton if that is approved by Bond commission.

Hal Alvord: Bob Genuario said that it was going ot be on the March bond comssion agenda, but the swrp says it won’t be. This results in $84/ton in july due to timing of when the binding happens (another thing to check into.)

In 2008 (aug 1) contract with CRA expires. Hal has spear headed effort to solve for this problem, has pulled in other departments in this (6 other towns commited to process ) Other cities may be joinging in the effort, the more garbage you have to the more attention you get. CRA is not helpful in process. Wheelabrator will own burn plant in Bridgeport, even though we paid for it. They are buying ti for $1, (why is that?) and if we combine out trash with the other 6 communites we are 150 000 tons.

Mayor Moccia: Genuario says it should be on the agenda. Mayor will call to verify.

Now a series of questions about pipes and if they are blocked or unblocked. The sanitary system is a closed system and smaller pipers. Storm drainage, has specific issues. You may not know until you get into the pipe what you have to do (light cleaning, heavy cleaning or a bulldozer) So they have complicated contrats with many pay lines need to have checkpoints (if you encounter this you are authorized to do X, Y and Z …. but do not pass GO, and not collect $200.)

A typical line of quesioning is paraphrased here:

Mayor :$226k what was that? Repairing drain lines. Under general drainage. Capital project so it may carry over form previous years.

Wilms: How soon will you begin work?

Alvord: “As soon as low bid selected, work can proceed.”

Wilms: What areas, the recent flood areas?

Alvord: Not same areas that Tigh and Bond study done.

Wilms: Why Not?

Alvord: Those pipes are clean. They are as clean as a whistle. They are just not big enough. Fitch street sediment need to be cleaned near retention pond, and that’s on the contract out for bid now.

Mayor: Recommends that money recommend in the capital budget be kept in. “We have spent money on storm drainage but we do have money in current accounts, which has not yet been spent.”

Alvord: Not sure what projects you are talking about.

Tom Hamilton: Storm drainainge 02-03 capital allocation still available.

Mayor: Is that committed to a specific project or is it available?

Wilms: $279k still available, can youproviode a list of storm drains you plan to clear? And for the next year as well?

Alvord: Yes, but Tigh and Bond ecumberance money won’t be available. (5258 object code)

Wilms: 9 moths completed and you are spending the $350k in the last 3 months. Are you going to wait like you did this time?

Alvord: Assuming a good bid, they can do a change order on the exitsing contract, with council approval, can be done in a month.

Wilms: Trucks on order; 1 or 2?

Alvord: Just took delivery on one truck last week.

Wims: What will trucks be doing?

Alvord: The pipe clearing contract is to clear blockages from pipes. That’s equipment that the city doesn’t have, and won’t have. The vacuum trucks will provide us with the capability to clean catch basins and man holes and space between catch basins and man holes. Routine sedimentation that you have year to year. …. City will have the ability to maintain the system once the blockages and collapes are fixed. Contractors are not cleaning out catch basins. City needs 4 trucks, 3 are 15 years old. At any given time they one is broken. You run out of places to weld, debris tank is the issue, high wear here. In September other truck coming in.

Mayor: So if they are that bad, why not ask for 4

Alvord: We have one, one is coming so we need 2.

And that exemplifies the night in general. Does the BOE go through this process at least internally?

Alvord then went on to explain that they are creative in how they find free stuff, grants and other ways to find revenues. Of course, that’s how financial presentations are supposed to be done. BOE?????

Some items made sense. Like a request for a Temporary labor account, which according to Alvord otherwise causes the DPW get the BET has to approve each and every time they want to hire a temporary worker.

Same issue with the Materials. Alvord said that they know what are needs are and the increase in pricing and when a budget is funded at a lower level, they know they have to go back and get special appropriations to get the jobs done, which take time, which costs more money. OK, he gives a better example, they know they have 200 paved over manhole covers. How on earth does that happen? How do the alligators get out? They are budgeted for 50 Ring risers used to raise the manhole to level of street. Going back for funds ends up being approx. a month delay.

Tom Hamilton then explained that the gas usage in city hall is way under budget. There’s a likely $80-90k in that account based on up to date bills. Last year natural gas prices were extraordinarily high, they’ve dropped down , winter was mild so those factors left money in those accounts (1/3 used per Wilms) And that while the asphalt bidget was 65k, they’ve only tapped $23k in the past 8 months.

Hamilton said that last year the total expense 53k, had half in June. For some reason staff objected to the implication that there was money wasted, yet everyone ignored them.

Then it was back to solid wastes and RFPs and whether to budget $500k, or something else.

And then turning to our favorite topic, the BOE. What! How’d they get involved? Well, it turns out that they have parking lots and driveways that the city is responsible for snow removal and other things. Alvord refered to it thusly: “We have tried to put some structure in how to service the BOE … but the BOE is not using our work order process … ”

Say it ain’t so. The BOE is ignoring some form of budgetary control that impacts the ability of the city to function efficiently? Oh my.

Alvord’s complaints:

1. They cause DPW overtime, because it needs to be done and night and weekends.

2. DPW seldom gets notification when school is sent home early or closed for the day. If it is in the middle of the day they have to pull trucks off the streets.

3. The DPW budget is built around snow. There are no Nov-April vacations and mandatory overtime. 25 set routes, can be manned that way. DPW needs to be a very structured in how to approach street clearing. The BOE operations manager (Opdahl?) needs to put in work orders to manage the budget. Alvord then passed out a sheet with staffing levels and how these random school events mess things up.

And this is such a surprise, Alvord sent over a list of issues in a February meeting and to date has had no response form Corda. We’ve been here before! We know the drill. I will go about finding out what Alvord sent, see if I can post it and await the document dump, er, response.

Truly the best part of this meeting was here, because next up was the discussion on threatening trees. There is, apparently a huge backlog of threatening trees, and discussion to capture the back log of these dangerous trees in a $150k budgets is not enough, according to Alvord. Alvord said that claims against city on tree damage totaled 45 and that only 3 were paid.

Mayor Moccia aksed, “How many dangerous trees are there? If and you had all the money take care of them, How many are there?”

There was an ensuing discussion of buckets and power zones, and much confusion over how many dangerous trees were really out there. Stuart Wells pointed out that if you were looking at the last 2 years only, it doesn’t do you any good is the problem is not being reduced.

Tom hamilton said the problem is getting smaller, and that if every department got a 15% budget increases, then taxes are increased by 15% .

Mayor Moccia really wanted to know, “How many [trees] have you taken down?”

Alvord finally admits, “None. We are in contract…”

Mayor Moccia sighed and said, “ok let’s move on we branched out far enough …”

DPW wants a GIS system so that they can track where the storm water drains are. And a feasibility study for a public power authority, and money for replacing DOS based traffic signals. Of course, I’m not sure why’d they want to upgrade out to windows, since a blue screen of death would create many a flashing signal …. but did you know that there are only 86 city owned traffic signals?

Then there was disussion on the “history of the world part II”, er, I mean on the need for mechanics. This led to explanation about Vehicle Equivalents, where one sedan is one, and one old sedan is 2 and a dump truck is more and so on.

Amazingly this lead to the announcement that 2 of the 1979 snow removal trucks were still in use!

Thus Alvord wants to transition from crisis to crisis mode to more steady management.

Ok, that was an important part of his presentation, which I am consolidating since we got to the end, and Bill Krummel still had to weigh in. Krummel said, that crisis to crisis management always costs more than preventative maintenance. But then he rambled a bit linking stuff being built where it shouldn’t be and astonishment that DPW did not know where the storm drainaige system was.

Former mayor Bill Collins said a few words about those 1979 snow plows, and that he drove around in the old trucks so residents couldn’t find him after a big snow storm. But his point was that the $100k item in electricity thing, was the most important item on the budget. Savings to the city could be tens of millions over the years. If we can pull it off, it would be the biggest impact.

But then he said something about it was more important to find that then fix the roads. Nooooo. Collins must drive a car that doesn’t have a fine tuned sports suspension, designed for performance driving, because to there is no way that electric bill savings could ever equal the savings one would incur by not having to pay more for car repair due to bad roads.

Phew, if you read this far, you are one interested Norwalker.

UPDATE: I made minor typo corrections to improve readability. Again, apologies for the mangling of the English language.