Westport Board of Health patches budget leaks

Savings found two weeks after board is blasted by Finance Committee

Posted 4/18/19

When last the Board of Health and Finance Committee met, things went badly.

There alone to represent the BOH, Matt Armendo reported that money had run out, the BOH wouldn’t be able make payroll …

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Westport Board of Health patches budget leaks

Savings found two weeks after board is blasted by Finance Committee

Posted

When last the Board of Health and Finance Committee met, things went badly.

There alone to represent the BOH, Matt Armendo reported that money had run out, the BOH wouldn’t be able make payroll before then end of tghe fiscal year, and there was no money left for postage, advertising, mileage and other things. What’s more, the BOH had pulled money from the Transfer Station, leaving it broke too.

But when the two met again last week, it was a far happier occasion.

Mr. Armendo and BOH member Maury May (serving as acting chairman after the election day defeat of former Chairman Bill Harkins) reported that the BOH and Transfer Station budgets are back in order.

They achieved that, they said, with some spending cuts and with money saved in the purchase of a rolloff truck that cost less than expected.

“We sent Matt in here a couple weeks ago by himself,” Mr. May said. “We kind of sent Matt in to the wolves and you kind of roughed him up.” The former chairman and another BOH member had not attended due to illness, he said.

FinCom Chairman Gary Carreiro greeted the news of budget repairs warmly.

“I want to commend the Board of Health for working through all this. I know that there have been a lot of things going on … the extra burden the Board of Health has with animal” issues …

Among the savings, the BOH will not hire the part-time agent it had hoped to bring on to assist with inspections, including those for pigs and horses, through the end of the fiscal year.

They expect to be able to get by instead, Mr. May said, thanks to the fact that part-time agent Ray Belanger, who had been out with a broken hip, notified the BOH that he would return to his duties as of this week and has decided not to retire after all.

Also, two clerks will be reduced from 40 hours to 35 hours for the time being.

Things should go better next year if the budget and items they will present at town meeting are approved, both Mr. Armendo and Mr. May said.

That request will include an additional $55,000 for things including that new part-time agent (approximately $25,000), 2 percent raises for employees, and increasing clerks’ hours to 40.

While recycling revenue is down, Mr. May said “we are very busy enforcing some regulations that have not been enforced in the past” such as fees for port-a-johns and dumpsters that have brought in $44,000 more than last year — a number that should exceed $60,000 by the end of the fiscal year.

Two weeks earlier, Mr. Armendo said the shortfalls were due in part to the fact that the BOH is much busier than in the past due to an increase in complaints that it has needed to respond to. He also noted that the budget had been prepared before he had come on as director.

“Why didn’t the Board of Health come to us earlier than now?” Mr. McCarthy asked then.

“This is almost negligence. I don’t want to be unkind but this is horrendous in different categories.”

FinCom members said they had little desire to bail out the BOH. “I think we set bad precedent when we publicly acknowledge that we don’t have enough money in the budget and we’re saying we’ll have to pay to you. That’s strike one,” Mr. Carreiro said.

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