Budget unresolved as tempers flare
Tewksbury Town Meeting members, expected to pass a slimmed-down municipal budget last week, instead voted to adjourn until later this month amid rising tensions among some local leaders.
After the vote Tuesday, rancor over the budget process prompted the police chief to threaten an ethics complaint against the school superintendent and left many other officials squabbling over how to divvy up the money.
"I'm very disappointed," Tewksbury Finance Committee chairman Ronald A. Hall said on Wednesday. "Somehow, we need to come together."
But some said they believed a cooling-off period was in order.
Former Tewksbury School Committee chairman Keith E. Rauseo said he supports the delay because he hopes officials will amend the proposed budget to better support public safety and education by making cuts in town financial services, such as assessing and tax collection and billing.
"Some jobs are more important than others; some services are more important than others," Rauseo said. "That's just life."
Like many area communities, Tewksbury faces skyrocketing costs that are far outpacing revenues. As in other places, the need to hack away at the budgets of significant town services has sparked fights and delays. Last year, neighboring Lawrence, facing the same problems, did not pass its budget until months after the July 1 start of the fiscal year.
This is the second time this year that Tewksbury Town Meeting has adjourned before approving a budget. Tuesday's adjournment came three days after voters by a wide margin defeated a $5.3 million tax-limit override, leaving next fiscal year's municipal budget at $79.4 million.
Town Meeting members could not agree on a spending formula and voted 196-173 to table the budget, for reconsideration June 25.
Passions ran high even before the meeting, and officials found themselves arguing about how to proceed.
Tewksbury Selectman Douglas W. Sears criticized school Superintendent Christine L. McGrath, for example, for her use of a reverse-911-like system to notify voters of the time and place of the June 7 override vote. The telephone system, One Call Now, is generally for announcements to parents about school matters.
McGrath said she saw nothing improper in telling people where and when they were to vote. "I was very careful," she said. "It's not like we had to pay additional money for its use."
McGrath said she invited selectmen to send a similar message but the board declined. She said before employing the One Call Now system, she consulted with members of the School Committee, and four out of five agreed with her. She said she also had requested an advisory opinion from the state Office of Campaign and Political Finance, which she said gave her the green light.
But Police Chief Alfred Donovan said Wednesday he believed McGrath's initiative constitutes "an improper use of town funds," and vowed to take the matter to the state Ethics Commission.
The Office of Campaign and Political Finance opinion, written by general counsel Gregory Birne and sent by e-mail two days before the override vote, did say McGrath's use of the phone system did not violate the law. But it also cautioned her that "such use seems likely to create an appearance of public resource use that you might want to avoid."
The opinion continued: "The primary purpose of the taxpayer-funded system is not to disseminate information relating to elections." It likened its use to "providing a phone bank," and cautioned against "any comment regarding the merits of a ballot question or any appearance of advocacy."
Ethical or not, the controversy over McGrath's action underscores what's at stake in the town of about 30,000. Under the proposed budget, Donovan would lose one deputy chief, two lieutenants, two dispatchers, a secretary, two police cars and gasoline, overtime, and training funds, he said.
The budget also would require schools to cut 32 teachers and eight other full-time positions. The loss could bring class sizes to 33 in elementary and middle schools, McGrath said.
For additional cuts, the Finance Committee has recommended closing the South Fire Station in July and August, setting fees for the municipal recreation program, and cutting library hours to 48 per week.
Tewksbury Town Manager David G. Cressman, meanwhile, has proposed a slightly different set of cuts that would have had the South Fire Station closed for seven months of the year.
Cressman's budget also recommended that the library remain open 52 hours per week. He said the extra time was needed to retain state certification, without which the library could not maintain ties with regional networks like the Merrimack Valley Library Consortium, an alliance of 35 libraries providing a variety of database, lending, book club, and other services to all its members.
Town officials are now under the gun to resolve their differences. If Town Meeting does not pass a budget by July 1, the state requires communities to shut down services, according to Robert Bliss, spokesman for the state Department of Revenue. "They don't have the authority to spend," he said of town officials.
Connie Paige can be reached at cpaige@globe.com.
