Marion plans to pull out of its two-town health district with Rochester.
In its first meeting since March 4, the Finance Committee voted unanimously on April 1 to join the unanimous recommendations of the Board of Selectmen and the Board of Health in carrying to town meeting the intent to end the arrangement with Rochester.
“It’s not working anymore. We’re looking to get out of it and do our own thing,” said Town Administrator Jay McGrail, who will include the decision on the warrant for town meeting to withdraw from the Marion-Rochester Health District. “The District itself is a very convoluted thing to run one person… Maybe we could do shared services.”
Marion expects positive, long-term financial implications from a new arrangement.
“That’s something we’ve been advocating for… we’ll end up saving some money,” said FinCom Chairman Peter Winters. “The concept was for three (or) four towns to be together… I think we could do this shared employee with Rochester, but do it in a different way.”
It will take a year for a dissolution of the two-town health district to go into effect.
Marion’s problems are not with Health Director Karen Walega but with the bureaucratic setup and its inability to manage the situation.
“The district pays for worker’s (compensation benefits) for one person, and we pay an accountant for one person,” explained McGrail. “When I say this it doesn’t come out right… but it’s control. One thing is there’s an employee for the Town of Marion that we can’t manage. (It’s a) tough way to work.
“If the board’s comfortable, I’d love to be able to put this on the warrant (for town meeting).”
A motion passed for Marion to remove itself from the two-town health district with Rochester.
“We finished the warrant here,” said McGrail.
In his update, McGrail told the Marion Finance Committee in its first meeting since early last month that, despite financial uncertainty at national and local levels, the town is faring well in Fiscal Year 2020.
“We were very conservative on our revenue estimates regarding real-estate taxes, excise taxes and the like,” he said. “Being that we’re so late, currently about to enter the fourth quarter (of FY20), we’ve already collected a majority of the revenue that we need to meet our expectations for the year.”
McGrail does not anticipate financial difficulties for Marion from now until July, but does expect a downturn in the fourth-quarter billing.
“Even with a downturn, we’ll still be able to meet our revenue expectations for the year,” he said, crediting Assistant Town Administrator Judy Mooney’s budgeting work over the last few years.
McGrail says Marion is in a position where even FY21 estimates, including state-aid estimates, are so conservative that it would take a very significant decrease in funding from the state and a very large decrease in what people will be paying in their taxes to be able to significantly impact the town in 2021.
“We have no idea – it could get really bad, I don’t know – but we’re prepared to weather the storm,” McGrail told Fincom. “The conservative-budgeting approach that we’ve taken has put us in a place where we’re not susceptible to slight (economic) swings. We could be susceptible to large (swings).”
McGrail expects that, if there is a “massive” impact on Marion’s budget, it would make that impact to FY22.
In the meantime, the priority has been to tie up all of Marion’s financial legwork and be ready to go with a warrant for a town meeting that may be held in an improvised format, perhaps using Sippican School classrooms so that participants can view on monitors from inside the same building but keep limits inside individual rooms to the state-mandated maximum of 10, with individuals able at appropriate moments to walk to the main room for in-person participation.
“If that’s the case and town meeting is not typical, I think what we’d be looking to do is just approve Articles 1 through 4 so that we have funding set up for FY21 starting July 1st, and then postpone town meeting to a date to be determined to deal with all of the capital articles and such,” McGrail told FinCom. “We’ll see how it goes, and you guys will be involved in that whole process.’
Winters suggested McGrail consider Hoyt Hall (Firemen’s Center) on the Tabor Academy campus, where town meeting has been held before.
“That’s got a lot bigger capacity so, as far as spacing people out or people sitting in household groups, that might be something you want to consider, if Tabor is obviously amenable,” said Winters.
Residents can deliver their tax payments into two drop-off boxes outside town hall, pay online or make an appointment for special circumstances.
Board member Margherita Baldwin asked McGrail if there was any provision in the federal CARE Act for those impacted by the coronavirus pandemic to the point of not being able to pay their taxes.
McGrail said he was receiving new updates from town counsel. Board of Selectmen member John Waterman, who was on the call, said that the state’s disaster declaration may free up funds.
McGrail gave an update on the increase in costs to Marion’s water and sewer budgets since FinCom’s last meeting. Sewer, projected to increase by 7.3 percent a month ago, was estimated at a slight decrease to a 7.24 percent increase, making the total amount $3.14481 million.
“David (Willett, DPW director) was pretty confident there wasn’t a lot of fat in that or opportunities to save money,” said Winters. “Obviously, seven percent is going to be a huge hit to the rate payers. You know, I don’t think there’s really much we can do, but we can decide how we want to vote on it.”
Ms. Baldwin’s motion to accept was seconded by member Shay Assad and passed without discussion.
Water enterprise was projected to increase by 10.83 percent, now down to a 10.28 percent increase.
The increases encompass the $2.8 million bond that Marion is in the process of taking out for the Mill Street project. According to McGrail, Marion has no capital projects at town meeting that require bonding. The amount the warrant will bring to town meeting is $2,183,799.
A motion to accept was passed without discussion.
Winters asked what happens if one of Marion’s contracted companies goes out of business.
Methuen Construction, which is working on Marion’s lagoon project, is one of the largest companies in the state, according to McGrail, who said, “Hopefully they can weather the storm. The contract we have with them is about 4 inches thick.”
Board of Selectmen member John Waterman was on the call and noted that Methuen Construction posted a performance bond.
“The most interesting thing over the next few weeks for Judy and myself will be we have some borrowing out that we’re waiting to get back in, get some rates on. It’ll be interesting to see how that shakes out and what we want to do,” said McGrail. “We’re in a situation where we’re not long-term borrowing right now.”
McGrail said that, even if Marion can hold town meeting, it won’t necessarily look to spend all of its free cash. He said the town will need to go back to the Capital Improvement Planning Committee’s plan to determine priorities.
To address smaller projects that McGrail said tend to get lost, he set aside a Building Maintenance fund of $50,000. (In Sandwich, that amount was set at $125,000). FinCom passed the motion unanimously. The money will be allocated for carpet replacement and especially painting.
“Painting never rises to a level of capital and, without a something like this in place, never gets done,” said McGrail, who hopes to see the Community Center get painted and carpeted with drywall repairs. “There’s a million little projects that just don’t rise to the capital (planning) threshold.”
He told FinCom the commitment is to come back next year and explain how every cent was spent. Any leftover funds would go back into free cash.
South Shore Generator quoted Marion at $47,000 for a new emergency generator for Perry Hill station to replace the 1994 emergency generator used to power the town during outages. Wolf Island was originally considered as well, but that will wait until next year.
Waterman called it “mission critical” that the generators are up and running.
The motion passed.
Citing larger matters such as the Master Plan, McGrail told FinCom he is pulling the $40,000 article to fund the storage facility off the warrant. Marion will continue paying $4,000 per year to rent space and also use the recently sold Atlantis Drive facility.
Winters cited a need to improve the means of ingress and egress, calling it difficult, and Waterman recommended a site plan for an overall improvement.
McGrail said Marion needs to replace the town’s bucket truck, which is expected to cost $150,000 if new. “My hope is to buy a used truck for $70,000 or $80,000 (and send the rest of the $150,000 back to free cash),” he said.
The 1984 frame is rotted out, unusable and out of service since July 2019, according to McGrail.
The motion passed.
Items 45 and 46 set up a limit for revolving funds.
“If we bring in $300,000… town meeting does not authorize us no matter how much revenue we bring in to spend more than that amount ($150,000 for recreation and $17,500 for health),” explained McGrail.
Winters asked if Marion will need to increase the amount for the Health Department.
“We’re doing OK,” said McGrail, noting a wire transfer of $25,000 from the state the week before the meeting that allowed Marion to bring in five public-health nurses to do case tracing for COVID-19.
McGrail further explained that the $17,500 revolving fund provides an immunization program in which the money comes in from Tabor and Rochester and Marion provides the immunizations.
Motions for both amounts passed.
The next meeting of FinCom was set for 7:00 pm Wednesday, May 6.
Marion Finance Committee
By Mick Colageo