GREENFIELD – Upon completion of the deliberations, the City Council’s Ways and Means Committee sent the mayor’s budget for fiscal 2022 of nearly $ 54.5 million with a positive recommendation to the full council, but also with a cut in the auditors’ budget by $ 107,500, which reduced it from $ 208,849 to just over $ 101,000.
District 3 Councilor Virginia “Ginny” DeSorgher proposed the cut, and although at least two of the five members of the Ways and Means Committee said they would not support it, especially in a year of reassessment, the committee unanimously voted for one Forward the budget with the proposed cut so that the entire city council can discuss it.
DeSorgher said the cut she requested is equal to the amount the city pays an “outside” company to run assessments. She said she doesn’t think the assessments were “fair or equitable” and that she thinks the city is paying “too much” to the company. After examining what other cities and towns of similar size are spending, she said the average cost is about a third of the cost Greenfield pays to outsource some of the work.
Mayor Roxann Wedegartner said the process was fair and equitable and that apples cannot be compared to oranges. For example, if you are looking at a cape house, the appraisers must compare it to other cape houses. She added that comparing commercial property to residential property is not what it’s done.
Although the city may decide to do all of the work in-house, Wedegartner argued that a revaluation year is not the year that decision is made.
“We have a senior physician and an administrative assistant in this office right now,” she said. “Both of them offer our residents many services. You can’t do everything. ”
Wedegartner said the Assessor’s Office was working its way back to first place after falling behind for “various reasons” in recent years.
During the previous tenure, former Mayor William Martin hired a company called Mayflower to promote the values of commercial and industrial real estate. Eventually, he decided to remove Mayflower and discontinue East Longmeadow’s Regional Resource Group. He paid more than $ 107,000 a year to appraise real estate and provide another appraiser.
Greenfield finance director Liz Gilman said the Assessor’s Office had to come back and start over, including the fact that Chief Assessor Kimberly Mew, who served as Assistant Assessor under the previous administration, took all the courses she needed to be Chief To become an assessor.
“We’ll be cleaning up for many years,” said Gilman. “I also compared what other cities with comparable populations and other factors outside of businesses pay for help.”
Gilman said a city or town could choose to pay an outside company or hire more employees.
“When you hire more people, you have to pay for benefits like old-age and health insurance,” she said. “In the end everything is the same. We are very aware of money. ”
Gilman said the city’s largest local receipt is vehicle excise tax and 60 percent property tax revenue. She said an assessor’s office takes more than one full-time and part-time employee to do this job. This is where the Regional Resource Group comes in.
Mew and her assistant are working on some assessments as well as cuts and other tasks that need to be done. Wedegartner said she did not want to burden her additionally.
“I have presented the appraisers with a very tight budget for next year,” said the mayor. “If the council cuts $ 107,500 from its budget, the office will just lag behind. That makes no sense. A suggested cut was made without a plan. It’s just untenable. ”
Mew said the household numbers, which relate to what other cities are paying, are “understatement or incomplete”, skewing the comparison with Greenfield.
“One of the reasons I would recommend funding the auditors’ budget is for the city to have a re-evaluation program for fiscal 2022,” she said. “This is a comprehensive program monitored by the Bureau of Local Assessment. If the budget is cut, the assessor’s office will not have the resources to properly complete the program. In this case, the city runs the risk of not approving the tax rate in a timely manner, which affects the timely dispatch of tax invoices. ”
She said if the assessor’s office is defused it will affect the ability to conduct inspections and data entry, personal property, sales tracking, data analysis and more.
The entire Council will begin to discuss the budget at its monthly meeting on Wednesday 19 May.
Other departments
Wedegartner’s operating budget for fiscal 2022 of nearly $ 54.5 million represents an increase of 1.1 percent, or $ 593,078, over this year’s budget of $ 53.9 million. She said the departments were asked to stay within a 1 percent increase from this year’s budget, meaning they are all level-service budgets.
Department heads said some of the largest increases to their operating budget are contractual, so these increases cannot be avoided.
The police department has asked for $ 3.7 million, while other areas under police control have requested their own allocations: Shipping: $ 143,752; Park Attendant, $ 597,675; and animal control $ 26,912.
The fire department asked for $ 2.5 million and emergency management asked for $ 19,485. The total public safety budget for fiscal 2022 is $ 7.3 million.
The public works department is calling for a $ 2.4 million budget for services for the next fiscal year.
The other departments that have presented their budgets in the past few weeks have been the Schools Department, which is asking for $ 20.4 million. the library: $ 679,713; and Leisure Department, $ 193,954. The health department is asking for $ 209,483. Council on Aging, $ 139,270; and the Upper Pioneer Valley Veterans’ Services District, $ 525,366. The mayor has applied for $ 1.6 million for the state.
Reach Anita Fritz at 413-772-9591 or afritz@recorder.com.