Latest Lisbon Budget just doesn't make any sense, once again.

SMOKING MIRRORS

The Town Manager and the Town Council are intentionally keeping information from the taxpayers of Lisbon. If the Town Manager and Town Council are on the up and up, why are they concealing information from the residents? Every taxpayer in Lisbon needs to know where his tax dollars are being spent.

The Town of Lisbon has a web site which could provide the latest on critical information like the proposed budget but instead they post information from last year such as 2011-2012 Budget is dated September 20^th 2010; or 2012 Budget presentation dated 15 March 2011 or the Custom Budget Report dated 29 April 2011. You can see how useful this information would be since the town just put out the latest version of the proposed budget dated 23 May 2011 but failed to post it to the web site for the taxpayers to review. Tonight is a special Town Council budget workshop so you can see why the Town Manager and Town Council do not want you to see the proposed budget. A taxpayer might want to question some of the figures like:

Dept/               2011                     2011                          2012

Div                Budget                Year to date                Proposed

01-135

5271              20,000                   15,158.35                     58,000

01-135

5405              21,000                   13,210.92                     25,000

01-140

5220              52,000                   36,676.76                     66,000

01-140

5245              20,000                   10,305.34                     32,500

I could write a ten page report and it would all read the same because almost every department is identical. Why would you budget so much more than you actually spent last year? I can see adding a small percentage for cost of living increases but never the mark up Mr. Eldridge is proposing. It is plain ignorant to pad the town budget by so much. This is exactly the reason the taxes in Lisbon are so high. Keep in mind the proposed budget is fifty (50) pages of the same mess.

Let me continue on more incidents in the proposed budget. The town of Lisbon paid $79,294.54 year-to-date in OVERTIME in the Police Department. Are you kidding me, the Lisbon Top Cop (Chief Brooks) can not establish a budget which eliminates almost $80,000 dollars of overtime. I think I could get one of our high school students to do a better job on the budget than Chief Brooks. You do realize the Police Department is our largest spender. The only reason the Public Works budget is higher is because the Finance Director moved Hydrant Rental ($290,000) and Street & Traffic Lights ($93,775) to the Public Works Department to conceal the Police Department budget.

Also, the Fire Chief and Recreational Director are receiving a 1.75% pay raise like everyone else in the town. The problem with this is the Fire Chief goes from $53,839 to $63,839 and Recreational Director goes from $36,144 to $46,144 which is actually a $10,000 dollar raise. According to my calculator, this is more than 1.75%. 1.75% would have been approximately $942.18 for the Fire Chief and $632.52 for the Recreational Director which is a far cry from $10,000 dollars. Again, the Town Manager is not being truthful with the taxpayers.

Let us look at another of the “Good Old Boys”, the Town Engineer is receiving a 1.75% raise like everyone else except he goes from $34,655 to $37,428. This increase is $2,773 which is much higher than 1.75%. Also in the proposed budget it says this is 50% of his salary but does not tell us where the other 50% is. Again, where are they hiding the money?

I could go on forever on the mismanagement in this proposed budget but it will do no good because the Town Council does not care about the taxpayers. They are there ONLY to support the Town Manager and ignore the best interest of this town. It is abundantly clear Mr. Stephen Eldridge has no clue what he is doing or does he? I can tell you this he is a master at manipulating the truth and hiding money. I also can tell you he DOES NOT have the best interest of this town at heart.

Larry A. Fillmore

Concerned Citizen