SOMERSET – A couple of years ago when Town Administrator Richard Brown broached the idea of consolidating the police and fire departments, the discussion was aimed at finding common ground.
Consensus was successful, he said with a chuckle last week.
“They both didn’t like it,” Brown said, of the fire and police chiefs, who share the same County Street building.
So why did he broach it again in a detailed message sent as selectmen were completing reviews of town budgets? Municipal expenses are expected to increase a modest 2½ percent, although they don’t include contract raises that must be negotiated for the upcoming fiscal year.
“Consolidation of public safety activities into one department can provide effective fire, EMS and law enforcement services while at the same time controlling current and future public safety costs,” Brown wrote the board.
Brown didn’t give that assessment until the last page of his five-page address. He also said he does not expect such changes could be quickly adopted, practically and legally.
The importance, however, is that communities in states like Florida and Michigan have successfully combined forces this way.
Brown wants selectmen to consider putting the option on the table.
Moreover, while some elected and financial officials like to say the recent “gloom and doom” reports of Somerset’s demise seem exaggerated, the declining Brayton Point tax revenues cannot be shrugged off, Brown indicated.
The numbers are in his letter: Where the power plant on 300 waterfront acres paid one third the town’s budget at its height, and continues paying 7 percent nearly a year after it closed, officials expect the tab to drop further before rebounding if and when reuses materialize.
“We recognize that the town is entering a period of more financial stress,” Brown wrote the board. “More aggressive management of local resources is needed to maintain our financial stability and make the town attractive for new development.”
His concept is to gain support to “deliver services differently but effectively from what we did in the past.”
Joining regional dispatching from the town’s joint police and fire service is one example.
For the first time, Somerset will seek a full-time town planner focused on economic development and, to a large degree, input to the private owners on reuse of Brayton Point after the plant and valuable site have been demolished and cleaned up.
Brown sees $550,000 given to the town in federal Economic Development Association grants as moving the town ahead.
Two-thirds of it will be used on the study under way to explore “an integrated water management plan” and create a regional wastewater district with towns like Swansea to expand a deteriorated customer base.
About $150,000 of the EDA grant is to update the town master plan for the first time in decades, and another $160,000 for a “site readiness program grant” and state capital project funding. A street-lighting grant program to convert to LED lights should save two-thirds of current costs in a few years, Brown said.
The new planner hired after July 1 would play the lead role with these grants and programs.
Among the most lucrative potential projects on the drawing board is a Route 6 hotel on land purchased from the town.
Brown said closing the deal should happen by the summer. It includes paying the $675,000 balance of the $750,000 sale.
The capital budget he’s developed would likely be funded at a fall Special Town Meeting rather than at the annual budget session in mid-May.
Those funds and expected completion of union contract negotiations will help show the amount needed from the tax levy.
Brown said the fiscal 2019 municipal budget is designed to be level-funded. Currently, school budgets are expected to increase slightly more than that side, 3 percent for the Somerset schools and 3.4 percent for the regional schools, Brown said.
He said it doesn’t paint the full picture because the town pays more than $6 million in school expenses for health and property insurance, trash collection and more.
One positive on health insurance is after changing the plan and share of expenses last year, increases this year are roughly half: 7 and 4.5 percent for the Blue Cross PPO and HMO and 5.5 percent for retirees.
Brown stressed that the K-8 and regional schools comprise well over half the town’s budget. “Clearly controlling the cost of education is the single most important factor in stabilizing the town’s finances,” he wrote.
He summarized a two-fold dilemma based upon his budget and financial assessments.
“You can’t keep saying to the taxpayer ‘we want more and more,’ and to our (municipal) employees say, ‘we’re not going to pay you more.’”
He’s followed through a prior personnel salary study with several personnel bylaw proposed changes. They’d affect municipal employees hired after the May 15 annual Town Meeting.
As the half-hour interview concluded, the question backtracked to whether the Board of Selectmen would address any proposal to change composition of the fire and police departments, which are the largest municipal budgets.
“I’m not going to speculate until I get that consensus,” Brown told The Herald News. “I’m letting them know as the dollars get diminished and the pressure is on, there are alternatives.”
Email Michael Holtzman at mholtzman@heraldnews.com or call him at 508-676-2573.