By Tracy Ouellette
Editor
Much of Monday night’s meeting of the East Troy Village Board was spent cutting items from the proposed 2015 budget to get it to balance.
One of the things cut in Department of Pubic Works Director Mike Miller’s budget revisions was the new street sweeper purchase the board recently approved.
Village Trustee Dusty Stanford was disappointed at the line-item cut.
“It would be nice to offer that service to the community,” he said. “It would be nice to put something back in place that is a benefit to the taxpayer.”
“I tend to agree with you,” Trustee Fred Douglas said.
“The budget is tight this years,” Village Board President Randy Timms said. “Unless you guys are willing to raise taxes, we can’t do it.”
Trustee Ann Zess said she was not only concerned about the cost of the machine, which could be as much as $250,000 if purchased new, but that the village couldn’t afford the added manpower to its use.
“You’re talking about picking up every leaf in the community, that’s not going to be a small amount of money,” Zess said.
The board debated the issue futher, but in the end decided that the street sweeper wasn’t something they could spend money on this coming year.
However, several of the proposed street repairs that Miller had pushed from 2015 to 2016 to balance the DPW budget were put back into 2015.
“I don’t think we should cut out street repair when we’re sitting on nearly $1 million in the fund balance that’s set aside just for that purpose,” Timms said. “To put everything back in will cost less than $400,000 and that leaves more than $500,000 in the fund balance.
“I think we should spend some of the money we’ve been saving.”
The other board members agreed, approving the use of up to $400,000 from the fund balance for the work, and Miller was instructed to put back the street work he cut for 2015 into the budget.
The board tweaked the sewer and water budgets as well, with the water utility shortage being a concern if some of the proposed street repairs required extensive water line repairs/replacement.
The water utility budget is tight and with the expected rate study to be done next year, the board has little to work with until that’s done and the water rates can be increased to increase revenue.
In further budget discussion the board debated the use of a salary study for village employees.
Timms said that while he’s generally “not a fan of these things” he believed it was time the village looked at its pay scale for all employees.
“I think were on the verge of a new era in regard to employee salaries,” Timms said.
Timms wanted to keep the $10,000 in the budget for this purpose and Zess agreed.
“We’ve been tossing this around for a couple of years not and I think it’s time,” she said.
Trustee Douglas reminded the board that the $10,000 fee for the study could be lost on a single wrong salary.
