Marion Finance Committee Chairman Shay Assad is concerned that the deviation from the original plan to pay for a new $800,000 patrol boat may not sit well with voters at the May 13 Annual Town Meeting.
Before committee members voted during Monday night’s public meeting to recommend the proposal that will be seen in Article 16 of the Annual Town Meeting warrant, Assad reminded Harbormaster Adam Murphy and Police Chief Richard Nighelli that the original plan was to finance a new patrol boat via the Waterways Account.
“The plan was always for the Waterways fund to carry this in its entirety. That’s how the Marine Resources (Commission) pitched it. It will be an article of interest,” said Assad.
As proposed, Article 16 pitches a sourcing evenly divided between the Waterways Account ($403,250) and the Treasury also known as Free Cash ($400,000). If the article fails in Town Meeting, the plan would be to borrow the money.
“One of the things that I’m trying to do is shift the culture … the Harbormaster is not a ‘they,’ it’s a department in the town,” said Town Administrator Geoff Gorman, further emphasizing that ramifications of statewide police reform.
Noting that the purchase now falls under the Police Department and must be explicitly categorized as public-safety equipment, Gorman said the Harbormaster is “not a stepchild organization” but “part of the police, part of the commission.”
Gorman said the new patrol boat will have firefighting capabilities.
“Right now, we don’t have a safe boat,” he said.
Assad clarified that the Finance Committee does not view the Harbormaster Department in any kind of lesser manner but nonetheless stressed the need to explain to voters why the financing plan has changed.
“I know there are a number of people who are very sensitive to this. It came up with the harbormaster building itself. You might want to provide some fallback position in an article,” said Assad. “The issue is, frankly … the whole purpose of this Waterways Fund was to cover this kind of stuff. … I know Judy (Mooney, recently retired finance director) and I were assured this was going to happen. This is going to be an issue with the townspeople.”
The original plan to finance the patrol boat entirely out of the Waterways Account went off the rails when construction costs of the new harbormaster headquarters presently under construction at Island Wharf were inflated by approximately $1,000,000.
Meantime, the state’s Seaport Economic Council supplied the lion’s share of the design and construction costs through grant funding but fell short in the final installment of the amount for which Marion applied. In a Special Town Meeting in October, the town voted to appropriate $1,200,000 from the Waterways Account to make up the difference.
The Waterways Account has been boosted in the last year by across-the-board, harbor-related fee increases that Gorman told Assad would continue to replenish the fund. Gorman stated that the new plan will save at least half the money in interest.
“At the end of the day, we have three debt articles in a row. This is the one we have two completely different buckets, treasury funds that we can pay without debt,” said Gorman.
Finance Committee member Tom Crowley told Gorman, “You’re going to want to make this story really tight.”
With five committee members attending the remote meeting, four “I” votes were confirmed via roll call, resulting in the committee’s recommendation of Article 16.
Informational efforts have been critical to other Town Meeting votes, most notably a second-effort zoning change making land off Route 6 eligible for a townhouse-style, residential development (yet to break ground).
In another move to address post-COVID, construction-cost inflation, the Finance Committee voted to recommend Article 15, which will ask voters to approve the transfer of $803,195 (for materials) out of Free Cash and to borrow $896,450 to complete the cost of building the new operations center for the Department of Public Works operations building at Benson Brook.
Gorman reported that bids came in last Friday afternoon, the lowest being from South Coast Improvement Corporation, the same company building the new harbormaster headquarters. The bid was higher than the estimated 2021 Town Meeting appropriation, so Article 15, explained Gorman, will total approximately $1,660,000. Gorman said the resultant annual increase in the average Marion homeowner’s annual tax bill will be $18.
After a brief interview with Old Rochester Regional District Superintendent of Schools Mike Nelson and Assistant Superintendent of Finance and Operations Howard Barber, the committee also approved Article 2, the FY25 operations budget.
The FY25 Schools Budget features a $7,080,780 assessment for Sippican Elementary (a 6.22% increase over FY24) and a $5,551,389 assessment to Marion taxpayers for ORR Junior and Senior high schools (a 5.24% increase over FY24).
Nelson and Barber also laid out the results of a hired firm’s recent review of ORR facilities for the committee’s consumption. The school district has debt coming off the books at the end of FY24 and discussed the advantages of taking on new debt to address critical needs of the school buildings.
Three major issues are being prioritized: a complete update of the HVAC system, replacement of 60 entry doors and a new public-address technology that will bridge the Junior and Senior high school buildings.
The Select Board was scheduled to close the Annual Town Meeting warrant during its regular public meeting on Tuesday night. The next meeting of the Marion Finance Committee was not scheduled upon adjournment.
Marion Finance Committee
By Mick Colageo