Another Citizen's Perspective on Manager's Budget Presentation

Breakdown of Lisbon's Manager's Presentation

This is a breakdown of the Manager's Presentation  presented at the town meeting during the Blizzard last Tuesday.
 
Click here for a link to the Presentation
 
Fy14 Budget ----- Manager's Presentation

Slide 3. 
    Interesting we receive  $62,000 for regional dispatch. If you subtract the PSAP fee of $18,000 the true revenue number is $ 44,000.

We have a budgeted revenue increase this year of  $70,000. (we need to keep this in mind)

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Slide 5.
     Shows that we consistently under estimate projected  -Excise Tax Revenue-.  (that's good but we need to keep it in mind when going through the budget process.)

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Slide 10.
   This slide is a good example of someone using statistics to deceive the public. True Mil Rates when adjusted to 100% valuation.

Durham  ----------13.25
Topsham ----------16.21
Brunswick---------17.43
Lisbon -------------18.48
Auburn ------------19.59
Lewiston -----------22.67

They are trying to hide the fact that  Lisbon’s mil rate is over a dollar more than Brunswick’s, a town almost three times our size.


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Slide 11. 
    This chart is pure deception and almost impossible to wrap your head around.  It appears they are showing Tax Allocation and not total expenses. 

The purpose of this manipulation is to make it appear Public Works is larger than the Police department.   Nothing could be further from the truth.

•     Communications (primarily and historically police) was removed from the Police Department several years ago to give the illusion of a smaller Police Department.

•     FICA and Health Insurance costs are not reflected in the proper departments thus hiding the true size of each department.

•     Most of the wage, health insurance and fica costs for Lisbon Government belongs in the Police Dept.

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Slide 12.
   This chart is correct because they transferred massive amounts of Police and Public Works wage and insurance costs into the general government account.  If our accounting system was a true reflection of department costs, the General Government Account would be much smaller than the Police or Public Works Departments.
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Slide 13.
  Notice how the General Government account keeps trending up year after year.  This is mostly due to the increased costs of the Police and Public Works departments.  The powers that be in town know the public wouldn’t accept this increase if it were applied to the correct departments.
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Slide 14.
   This chart has been changed from last year.  This year they split insurance and benefits from wages to give the appearance of a smaller wage cost. Employee wage and benefit costs are over 55% of our total budget and most of that cost is in the Police Department.
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Slide 17.
    It would be interesting to know what the communication reserve is?
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Slide 21.
 Planning for the future:

 1.    Increase revenues:
   
2.    Don’t over complicate the problem.
   
3.    Keep an open mind.  If we find it necessary to reduce staffing we shouldn’t bury our heads in the sand and keep denying the obvious.  We should institute an immediate hiring freeze in the most over staffed departments. (no layoffs necessary if we address this now)

4.    We need input from many sources   Including the taxpayers. This will be very difficult due to the elimination of free speech at council meetings. One has to wonder if this move was planned with budget season in mind.  The taxpayer's didn’t make this mess the powers that be in Lisbon caused this nightmare.
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Conclusions:

•     This presentation was design to confuse and manipulate the taxpayers.

•     The police budget has become so large it is becoming impossible to hide.

•     We must have a hiring freeze in the most overstaffed department (s)

Respectfully,
LisbonMaine.net
Joe Hill