Board members stand ground on budget issues
By Tracy Ouellette
Editor
Monday night’s meeting of the East Troy Village Board saw trustees squaring off against each other during discussion about the 2016 budget.
Trustee Ann Zess has been vocal about her questions as to why the Department of Public Works needs another full-time employee at recent meetings and the subject came around again when Clerk-Treasurer Eileen Suhm needed an answer from the board whether the $86,000 a year position of collection systems operator needed to be budgeted for in 2016.
DPW Director Mike Miller said at the meeting he thought the actual salary for the position would be less.
Zess had sent a detailed memo to the board and Miller Monday afternoon outlining her thoughts on the new position and other budget matters. She cautioned the board that it was their responsibility to be fiscally responsible and “not to add to our fixed costs, knowing that in the future these fixed costs will have to be reduced.”
Zess reiterated her point at the meeting in regard to the new DPW position, saying she didn’t see the need for another full-time employee in the department as the DPW had been handling the workload just fine. She asked the board to put off hiring a new employee for one year to really examine the issue and make sure it was necessary.
Trustee Dusty Stanford said he took exception to the idea that the board wasn’t being fiscally responsible with the hiring of another DPW worker.
“You can be penny wise and pound foolish with this,” Stanford said. “It’s fiscally responsible to do this; we need to do this.”
Zess disagreed and pointed out that the department has been running well with the eight employees it has. She reminded the board they had recently approved a full-time apprenticeship position and when they approved a part-time employee last year to be trained to take over for an employee who was going to retire this year, the board was told when the new employee went full time to take over the position this year, they board would need to budget an additional $10,000 this year for that increase in position.
In a response to Zess’ memo, Miller stated that would be true if “I were not asking to replace Bud position with the suggestion of hiring.”
In Miller’s response to Zess’ memo, he contends the department has actually been short an employee and with the new hire, would return the department to the same level it was in 2010, with nine employees. Village Board President Randy Timms has agreed with this and sent an email Tuesday morning to the board outlining the DPW employment history over the past five years.
Zess strongly disagreed with Timms take on the history and wrote back detailing what she thought was “misleading” in Timms’ email to the board members. Saying a 2010 full-time position that was budgeted for but not utilized was not an open position, but in fact a tax cut.
At the meeting Stanford said he couldn’t understand why Zess was “pushing back so hard” on this and it was the board’s responsibility to make sure the village’s infrastructure was sound. He questioned Zess as to what she thought the money would be better used for.
She said there were a lot of things they could use the money for, from soccer fields to the library needs. Stanford agreed that those needs were important but he said infrastructure needs should take precedence.
“It’s fluff,” he said. “You can’t hang curtains on broken windows.”
Zess said it was a matter of prioritizing things.
Timms suggested tabling the issue until the Sept. 28 Committee of the Whole meeting so the board had time to study Zess’ memo.
DPW employee and Wastewater Treatment Plant manager Jake Kincaid addressed the board, at the behest of Miller.
Kincaid said that while they had enough employees to “get by.” There were many projects and things that needed to be done in the village that there wasn’t time for.
“We get a lot done, but there are a lot of shortcomings,” Kincaid said.
Zess said she was concerned that the bar kept “getting higher and higher” and that she understood there had been regulation changes, but the fact was, the village itself hadn’t grown in the last five years.
“I’m just trying to keep our fees – water and sewer – to keep from going crazy.
