Riga still in budget discussions

Riga still in budget discussions
December 20 deadline approaches

With a little more than a month to go, Town of Riga officials remain embroiled in salary discussions for the 2007 budget - which, according to state law must be passed by December 20.

Following the regular board meeting on November 14, officials went into executive session to continue talks on the budget as it relates to salaries.

Resident Bill McCombs questioned the board and its lack of a budget. For comparative purposes, he said, there are at least three local area towns that elected new supervisors last year - Riga, Victor and Irondequoit. "Irondequoit and Victor have already voted on their 2007 budgets," he said. "The Town of Riga budget is one-fifth the size of their two counterparts. Is a smaller budget more complex than theirs?"

McCombs requested an update on the status of the town's budget and said that the "supervisor of Riga insisted the town retain an outside budget consultant claiming that if it is beneficial to the village (Churchville) it would also be beneficial to the town. "The compilation procedures and interaction with this consultant may, in fact, be very different in the village," McCombs said. "The prudent approach for the Riga supervisor would have been to observe how the village utilizes the services of the consultant and workshop the learned results to assess applicability for the budget process for Riga in successive years."

Supervisor Pamela Moore said she felt the town needed to bring a consultant on board for the budget process because the town needed a more "robust" process. "We needed more rigor applied to the budget process than had been applied in the past," she said. "Unlike many communities, we have funds available to us as a surplus (because of the venue as being a host community for the Mill Seat Landfill) I want to look at a multi-year budget and establish reserve funds." Moore said she wants to maximize the benefit of the landfill revenues.

Councilman Bob Ottley reminded Moore that she was in the room during the previous years' budget processes.

"I was, and I was appalled at the process, especially with salary discussions," she said. "In the past, numbers were just thrown on the table."

Moore said the process would be "slow and painful" the first year as the town was moving from a cash to an accrual system.

To date, the town has spent close to $8,500 on the services of the budget consultant. Ottley questioned the price and said he thought the consultant was brought in at a price not to exceed $6,000. Moore said a "price not to exceed" was never placed on the process.

McCombs said the supervisor "keeps touting that the budget process is open" but that she alone is legally responsible for all financial matters and that the financial consultant is prohibited from discussing the budget with anyone other than the supervisor. "Is this merely an empty statement, that the process is open?" McCombs asked. "What really matters is this: what is the status of our town budget?"

Dates were suggested for presentation of the budget to the public but had to be rearranged several times because, Ottley pointed out, there is no preliminary budget available to the public. A workshop is planned for November 27 to discuss the budget, and a board meeting is set for November 28.

Board members planned workshop sessions for the budget and plan to present a preliminary budget to the public on December 14 and a meeting for budget adoption set for December 19.

In an e-mail communication following the meeting, Moore said, "I believe we have completed salary discussions so we need to roll up that information and move on to discussions of other budget matters."