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Westbrook Selectmen Propose Town Budget with 4.2% Increase

With a unanimous vote, the Board of Selectmen on Feb. 25 adopted an $11.9 million town government and debt service budget that, if left unchanged, would mean a net spending increase of about $482,522 or 4.2 percent over the current year.

The town government budget now moves on to the Board of Finance (BOF) for review. BOF workshops with the town departments began last week.

The proposed budget has funding for two new positions in the Land Use Department and an increase of four hours per week (from 36 to 40 hours) for the assistant director of Parks & Recreation.

With more professionals at work in the town’s Land Use Department, the Board of Selectmen supported the department’s request to add one full-time administrative assistant.

Two town positions in the Land Use Department that were once part-time have moved to full-time in the past two years: the director of health and the town building official. These changes have in turn led to added work and many more contacts by phone and in person with the public. The department therefore requested one more administrative assistant to free more time to assist residents and contractors who come to the counter asking for help filing land use applications and who call by phone.

In addition, the town now also has a part-time health educator in the Health Department who provides health education and performs restaurant inspections. Through this budget, a long-vacant slot of environmental health technician to oversee the town’s mandated septic tank pump-out program would be filled and funded. The Water Pollution Control Commission had delayed filling this opening until the town had hired a full-time director of health/registered sanitarian who could assist and coordinate work with the environmental technician.

The net cost of the new, full-time administrative assistant at 40 hours per week was $41,413. The WPCC already has funding in its budget for one-half year of the salary of a more senior program manager.

WPCC Chairman Marilyn Ozols told the selectmen that now that the town has a full-time director of health, the WPCC recommends the town hire instead a more junior staffer, an environmental health technician. As a result, the incremental cost to fill the slot would be $11,000 in the WPCC salary line.

The Board of Selectmen also agreed with Finance Director Andrew Urban’s recommendation to delay issuing the next set of bonds to pay for town fire trucks and other approved capital items until after July 1, the first day of the new fiscal year. This strategy would save the town $189,2000 next year compared to the option of issuing the approved bonds in the current fiscal year.

Urban told the selectmen that if the Board of Education budget as proposed by the superintendent is adopted, together the town government and school budgets would result in a combined budget increase of 2.3 percent over the current year.

Still up for discussion in March is the question of Westbrook’s approach to town policing. Currently the town relies on three state troopers and a team of constables. The selectmen plan to hold a public discussion of the town’s policing model sometime in March.