Finance Committee - 3/21/2018 Page 11
Mayor Donchess
Now what this escrow refers to is at the end of the year, there will likely be unexpended appropriations, things
that were voted in the budget for Fiscal Year 2018 which weren’t expended in various categories across the
budget. Those funds can be re-allocated. Before the cap was ruled by the Court to be in violation in State
Law, those were all cap eligible funds because they had already been appropriated. In any event, those can
be reassigned into something and given the number you just pointed out, we may wish to direct some of those
unappropriated funds into the CERF account. We did that | think at the end of Fiscal 2017, | think we directed
$700,000.00 into the CERF account or $900,000.00. We are in Fiscal 2018 so it was, oh it was at the end of
2016, we directed $900,000.00?
David Fredette
| think it was $717,000.00.
Mayor Donchess
We were concerned, we wanted to have more money carried forward. Now excess revenue can also be
directed into that account but that often is used to help with the tax rate.
Alderwoman Kelly
Mr. Mayor answered some of my questions, but | just wanted to Know what are the other funding sources in
order to replenish this account when it gets down to that low as Alderman Laws was pointing out?
David Fredette
Other funding sources?
Alderwoman Kelly
How does the money, | mean he’s talked about unappropriated going in there but are there other sources for it
or is that it?
Mayor Donchess
In the budget, money is appropriated into the account every year. If you look at the second to last slide,
entitled “Capital Equipment Reserve Fund “CERF” Balance Analysis, it shows the appropriate that appears in
the budget. So under the budget if passed as proposed, $1 million dollars would go into the CERF account.
Now should it be more than that? Yes it should. But we are thinking we are going to be impacted by this re-
evaluation so we are trying to keep things as tight as we can possibly can. That seemed like the minimum that
we could put in. It should be more, but if we put more in then the tax rate is higher and we are trying to
mitigate the effects of still the pension increases we were hit with as well as the re-evaluation.
Alderman O’Brien
Thank you Mr. Mayor. | have a question for Mr. Fredette. When we purchase a fire truck, we can spend
anywhere from about half a million to three quarters of a million dollars for the purchase of the vehicle.
Currently right now we do have a couple of bonds in purchasing fire trucks. Is that not the better way to go
than looking at the CERF account and maybe we could re-evaluate the CERF account accordingly with that.
