Pension Costs Take Over Town Meeting

Unfunded pension liabilities for the 2012-2013 fiscal year overshadowed debate on municipal and school spending for the upcoming fiscal year at Barrington’s Financial Town Meeting Wednesday night.

Next year’s budgets, totaling almost $61.5 million and boosting spending by 3.4 percent, were approved with no amendments and almost no discussion. That resulted in a new property tax rate of $17.95 per $1,000 of assessed value or about an average tax hike of 1.76 percent. 

Pension liabilities and the need for immediate reform, though, stole the floor in the Barrington High School auditorium. Emphatic comments were directed primarily at Sen. David Bates and Rep. Joy Hearn as members of the General Assembly, which appears to be scheduling a special pension reform session for October. 

Or as Moderator Julia Califano said while swinging the town meeting back to its primary purpose, the town budget: “I think we have sent a clear message to our legislators." 

Barrington faces a potential $2.9 million increase in its pension obligations for municipal employees by the 2012-2013 fiscal year, said Finance Director Dean Huff. That’s more than twice the increase facing taxpayers for all other expenses this year.

“We pay what the state tells us to pay,” Huff said. “The rates caught us all by surprise.”

Committee on Appropriations Chairwoman Kathy Cadigan said the unfunded pension liability is a state issue “that is up to the legislature to change, and it’s a very fluid situation right now.”

Chad Mollica took the microphone on the floor to disagree with Cadigan.

“It’s a problem for all of us,” he said. “It’s not just the state. We should look at cutting costs…because we’re heading into a storm and it will be ugly next year.”

Joel Hellmann said: “The real problem is that this does not have answer. The problem is too big and the unions are too strong." 

Califano asked Bates and Hearn to take a few minutes to talk about what is happening in the General Assembly on pension reform.

Bates said that General Treasurer Gina Raimondo is “putting together a working group, not a study group, to come up with legislation” to correct the system.

Hearn said: “We understand it is a shared burden. But we need to solve it once and for all. Municipalities and taxpayers can’t take it anymore.”

Hearn and Bates also weighed in on the school funding formula approved by the legislature last year, with somewhat differing takes on the matter.

Hearn believes the funding for the schools as laid out under the new law will be part of the state budget. Bates said he can’t answer that right now.

The formula won’t change, he said, but “I’m more concerned that it may not be fully funded.”

School officials have built in a $600,000 increase in state aid in the new spending plan.

One issue that did generate a vote count was a proposal to attach a $10 million cap to the resolution that gives the town the authority to issue notes to fund emergencies, such as the sewer work needed a couple of years ago.

Huff said the town needs the ability to float notes for emergencies without having to wait three to six weeks for a bank to approve a loan. He doesn’t want a cap that could still tie his hands.

The floor amendment was defeated. The resolution passed as proposed.

The couple of hundred voters in the auditorium also raised no opposition to any account as Califano read through them one by one.

They then showed their support for the appropriations committee and its work in keeping spending under the 4 percent cap imposed by state law by re-electing them for another year. There was not a single opposing vote.