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12/20/2016 02:30 PMAs Donna Castracane, the town’s new finance director, walked into the Westbrook Finance Department for the first time on Monday, Dec. 5, there was little time for her to get her bearings. It was early December and already past the time when the department normally has begun the process of preparing the proposed town budget for the next year.
Castracane, who holds a master’s degree in public administration, comes to the Town of Westbrook well-prepared to tackle this first major task. In her last job, she served as assistant director of management and budgets for the City of Norwalk, overseeing the preparation of budget documents for a city with combined operating, capital, internal service, and enterprise fund budgets of over $400 million.
Eliminating the long, daily commute from her home in Guilford to Norwalk each day is an added benefit that gives her a little more time to help her get up to speed quickly on Westbrook’s finances.
In Westbrook, the finance office starts working on the next year’s budget requests in late November. The finance department provides guidance and templates for town department heads to use in preparing their operating and capital budget requests for the next fiscal year that starts on July 1. The finance department also provides financial reporting to guide the departments. These reports may include a three-year history of actual versus budget spending. In addition to the operating budget requests, town departments are asked to develop a list of any long-lived items they need, usually referred to as capital purchases; examples would include new equipment or replacement vehicles.
For the Public Works Department, a capital request might be to replace a truck. For another department, it could be to buy a new piece of equipment or software package.
Once the town’s budget books are assembled by department and account, they are given to the Board of Selectmen, as a type of holiday gift, to study and review. Board of Selectmen budget workshops with town department heads begin in January.
Castracane is also working to find and organize the collection of records and documents from the department on a shared drive so that either she or Carol Hess, the town’s assistant finance director, can access and work with them. When Andrew Urban was finance director, a number of the department’s operational documents, reports, and records that he had prepared were stored on his laptop’s drive rather than on a shared department computer drive; as a result, Hess did not have access to them.
Castracane and Lesley Wysocki, the schools’ business manager, are already collaborating on various issues. These include discussions of the benefits of software modules the school district already uses that the town could add to its computerized accounting system to enhance its capabilities. At the last Board of Selectmen meeting, Wysocki also offered to share fuel and electricity purchase and price lock-in recommendations she receives from the school district’s energy broker. Wysocki said that acting quickly when these arrive in her in-box has meant real significant savings on energy purchases over time. And if Castracane were to have similar authority to commit to beneficial energy rate lock-ins, the town could also save on energy purchases.
Currently, the town is subject to month-to-month fluctuations in the market prices of fuel, electricity, and energy, which means the town pays high prices for fuel oil and natural gas in the winter when those fuels are more expensive. Unlike the school district, the town has not had a program for locking in energy rates when they are favorable to save money. At the recent Board of the Selectmen meeting, the BOS appeared interested in a shift in strategy; if made, the change would require the BOS to delegate to Castracane the authority to lock in fuel, energy, and electricity prices when favorable to reap savings.
Wysocki told the Selectmen that the Board of Education delegated to her the authority to lock in favorable prices a number of years ago.