News

Council struggles to keep city budget flat

By GLYNIS HART
[email protected]
CLAREMONT – Interim City Manager John MacLean, assisted by Mary Walters of the finance department, produced a city budget for Fiscal Year 2020 with no tax increase. The city council discussed the budget at last week’s meeting and will continue to discuss it this Wednesday, having extended the meeting to a second date.

Councilor Jon Stone made a motion to table the budget resolution for another week since he hadn’t realized the budget wasn’t in his council packet, and therefore hadn’t had time to review it. The motion to table was defeated by a tie vote. The budget must be finalized by June 26 to allow state officials time to approve it.

The proposed budget is available on the city website.

The cost for sewer service in the city came in almost $400,000 below its revenue; Councilor Nick Koloski asked whether that money could be borrowed from the water budget.

A related item, the $161,000 the city fire department pays the water department for hydrant rental, was nixed by MacLean and plowed back into the fire department budget for apparatus.

“How does this $161,000 payment benefit fire service?” MacLean asked. “We replace a handful of hydrants each year … We’re doing eight fires a year. How many times over have we paid for the hydrants with that kind of rental fee?”

MacLean recommended that one third of that money be used to replace fire department equipment and the remaining two-thirds go to road repairs. He would sell two fire trucks and replace them with one combination 2,000-gallon pumper tanker, and replace the fire chief’s vehicle.

“Is it proportional to the benefit, or are we basically subsidizing the utility using taxpayer dollars?” MacLean asked.

Koloski thought it might be the other way around: utility rate payers are paying for a benefit everyone in the city enjoys.

“I don’t really think that’s fair to pass along the cost to the person paying the water bill,” said Koloski.

The issue has a history at least 20 years old.

Nine years ago (on Nov. 20, 2010) another councilor asked why the city pays hydrant rental fees. Then-Fire Chief Peter Chase said hydrants are factored into the city’s insurance rating: “The whole community shares that rating, so the whole community shares the cost of the fire hydrants.”

By that 2010 meeting a conflict between paying for trucks and renting hydrants was already old news: Bruce Temple, the public works director, dated the hydrant fee from a water rate survey in 1999-2000. Former Fire Chief Rick Bergeron said a capital reserve fund to replace apparatus would be cheaper.

Koloski said he googled hydrant rental fees in New Hampshire and they’re not uncommon.

However, current Fire Chief Bryan Burr went to the podium Wednesday night to state that Newport, Keene, Lebanon, and Franklin don’t pay for hydrant rental.

Not only was Claremont unusual for paying for hydrant rental, “The auditors felt Claremont was extraordinarily high,” said Burr.

Koloski said the city had hired a consultant to study water and sewer rates some years ago who said the opposite, “that we weren’t charging enough.”

MacLean said he wasn’t against there being a rental fee, perhaps a lower one.

The Insurance Services Organization (ISO) rating uses a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the worst and 1 being the best. In 2010 Claremont was rated at 4. The ISO looks at the efficiency of the fire department, availability of water, and the efficiency of first responder rescues.

“I think the bigger adjustment to your rating is your reduction of staff that happened last year,” said MacLean.

The ISO rating is only done once every five years; it will be another two years before Claremont’s rating changes.

This article has been corrected from the print version. John MacLean is interim city manager, not acting city manager.

Avatar photo

As your daily newspaper, we are committed to providing you with important local news coverage for Sullivan County and the surrounding areas.