Capital Budget '10/11: overview & CNR vs bonding
Here's the overview of the current year and five year capital budget that has been proposed by the TM:
I'll provide the details of the budget over the next few weeks.
And below is the breakdown on which items would likely be funded thru the operating budget (CNR or Capital Non-Recurring) vs. the capital budget (bonded with ten or 20 year bonds). The CNR budget is here:
The CNR budget is typically in the range of $1.0 to $1.5 million dollars. It is one part (of five parts) of the town's nearly $100 million operating budget. The other four parts are: general government, schools, debt & contingency.
The bonding budget is here:
A couple of points:
1) As you can see, the $30 million sewer plant upgrade is not in Year One. If that holds, then it won't be a referendum question this year.
2) The Townwide Energy Conservation Plan is not included in the capital budget. Yet it may require a referendum this fall if we get useful responses for the suggested RFP deadline. So if the Council wants to move forward on energy efficiency and infrastructure improvements at the Town Hall, PD, CHS & Dodd... then we'll need to incorporate this as part of the capital budget discussions. This would also impact the 2012 / 2013 capital budget. That's where the CHS eletric retrofit and air conditioning project landed after last year's deferral.
3) The turf is in the school part of the capital budget.
More details to come... but figured this is a good starting point for discussion.
Tim White
3 comments:
Looks like you reversed the display of the CNR & Bonding budgets.
I would think the line for Turf Field would also include amounts to be spent on the track. Are the track numbers in here somewhere?
Turf Project = $0 and it is listed as such in the capital plan.
The Track Replacement was approved already but only half of the amount was funded by the last TC. There's another line item for the remainder of the track replacement cost for Year 1.
The two projects are listed and accounted for separately. There's no reason to lump them into one project as they are both funded differently (bond vs. donations). Also, if one fails to get the green light (i.e. Turf) then it won't impact the track.
However, there's another reason these two projects are kept separate. If they're combined then the cost of the track may very well cross into referendum territory. Lumped together, the turf field would likely get voted down if the voters had an opportunity to vote on it. This is the main reason why it's being back-doored via donations. Yes, I believe the track replacement was orchestrated around minimal impact to the success of back-dooring the turf field.
Although it's odd to see turf listed as $0.00, I'm glad it's kept on a list somewhere. Question is: Who actually owns the turf project (BOE or TC) and When will we get hard numbers for the projects actual costs and not guesstimates?
Does anyone else notice the similarities between the turf field and pool cover? i.e. Pool Cover replaced every 8 years $500K and the Turf Field replaced every 8 years $500K? Yes, really.
Someone should really challenge the phosphate removal mandate from the state. After the big soap companies removed phosphate from laundry detergents in 1980, and companies like Scott's removed them from TurfBuiler lawn fertilizer in Ct, there really is no longer a problem. Minor amounts in some dishwasher detergents doesn't justify towns spending millions to solve a non-problem. Our legislatures should try to understand the issue and look at the cost/benefit in these tough times.
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