GREENFIELD — After completing deliberations, the City Council Ways and Means Committee sent the mayor’s fiscal year 2022 budget of almost $54.5 million to the full council with a positive recommendation, but also with a $107,500 cut to the assessors budget that reduces it from $208,849 to just over $101,000.
Precinct 3 City Councilor Virginia “Ginny” DeSorgher proposed the cut, and though at least two of the five members of the Ways and Means Committee spoke out to say they would not support it, especially in a revaluation year, the committee voted unanimously to forward the budget with the proposed reduction so that the full City Council can discuss it.
DeSorgher said the cut she requested equals the amount the city pays an “outside” company to do assessments. She said she doesn’t believe the assessments have been “fair or equitable,” and she thinks the city is paying the company “too much.” Having looked into what other cities and towns of similar size are spending, she said the average cost is about one-third of what Greenfield is paying to outsource some of the work.
Mayor Roxann Wedegartner said the process has been fair and equitable, saying you can’t compare apples to oranges. When looking at a cape house, for instance, assessors have to compare it to other cape houses. She added that comparing commercial properties to residential is not the way it is done.
Though the city might eventually decide to do all of the work in-house, Wedegartner argued that a revaluation year is not the year to make that decision.
“We have a chief assessor and an administrative assistant in that office right now,” she said. “The two of them are providing a lot of services to our residents. They can’t do it all.”
Wedegartner said the Assessor’s Office is working its way back to “square one” after falling behind during the last several years for a “variety of reasons.”
During the previous administration, former Mayor William Martin hired a company called Mayflower to assist with commercial and industrial property values. Eventually, he decided to remove Mayflower and hire the Regional Resource Group of East Longmeadow, paying it more than $107,000 a year to assess properties and provide another assessor.
Greenfield Finance Director Liz Gilman said the Assessor’s Office has had to come back and start from scratch, including having Chief Assessor Kimberly Mew, who was assistant assessor under the previous administration, take all the courses she needed to become chief assessor.
“We’re cleaning up a lot of years,” Gilman said. “I’ve also compared what other towns and cities of comparable population and other factors are paying outside companies to help.”
Gilman said a city or town can choose between paying an outside company or hiring more employees.
“When you hire more employees, you have to pay benefits, like retirement and health insurance,” she said. “It’s all the same in the end. We’re very cognizant of money.”
Gilman said the city’s largest local receipt is motor vehicle excise tax and 60 percent is revenue from property taxes. She said an Assessor’s Office needs more than a full- and part-time person to do that work, which is where Regional Resource Group comes in.
Mew and her assistant are working on some assessments as well as abatements and other tasks that need to get done, so Wedegartner said she doesn’t want to put any added burden on them.
“I presented a very ‘bare bones’ budget for the assessors for next year,” the mayor said. “If the council cuts $107,500 out of its budget, the office will just get further behind. That doesn’t make sense. A proposed cut was made with no plan. It’s simply untenable.”
Mew said the budget figures put forth pertaining to what other towns and cities are paying were “understated or incomplete,” skewing the comparison to Greenfield.
“One of the reasons I would recommend funding the assessors budget is the city is undergoing a revaluation program for fiscal year 2022,” she said. “This is a comprehensive program overseen by the Bureau of Local Assessment and if the budget is cut, the Assessor’s Office will not have the resources to adequately complete the program. If this happens, the city will be at risk of not getting timely approval of the tax rate and that will affect the timely mailing of the tax bills.”
She said if the Assessor’s Office is defunded, it will affect the ability to complete inspections and data entry, personal property, the tracking of sales, data analysis and more.
The full council will begin its discussion of the budget during its monthly meeting on Wednesday, May 19.
Wedegartner’s fiscal year 2022 operating budget of almost $54.5 million is a 1.1 percent or $593,078 increase over this year’s budget of $53.9 million. She said departments were asked to stay within a 1 percent increase over this year’s budget, which means they are all level-services budgets.
Department heads have said some of the largest increases in their operating budgets are contractual, so those increases cannot be avoided.
The Police Department has asked for $3.7 million, while other areas that fall under police have sought their own allocations: dispatch, $597,675; parking enforcement, $143,752; and animal control, $26,912.
The Fire Department has asked for $2.5 million and Emergency Management has asked for $19,485. The total public safety budget request for fiscal year 2022 is $7.3 million.
The Department of Public Works is asking for a $2.4 million level-services budget for next fiscal year.
The other departments that presented their budgets over the past couple of weeks were the School Department, which is asking for $20.4 million; the library, $679,713; and Recreation Department, $193,954. The Health Department is asking for $209,483; Council on Aging, $139,270; and the Upper Pioneer Valley Veterans’ Services District, $525,366. The mayor has requested $1.6 million for general government.
Reach Anita Fritz at
413-772-9591 or afritz@recorder.com.
A previous version of this story had erroneous budget figures for the parking enforcement and dispatch line items.