2008 Annual Report of the TOWN MANAGER
For as many years as I have been writing annual reports, it seems that I have always started by wondering, "What have I done all year?", yet twelve months have flown by, and every day seems busier than the day before. But upon reflection, I can now see that the bulk of my time has gone to financial management, organizational development, regional cooperation efforts and safeguarding our citizens' interests.
As nearly every year, financial management took top billing for me in 2008. The single biggest part of my time is taken up with planning what the Town needs to do for the coming year and determining how we are going to do it, how much it will cost and where the money will be found. We need to do this, not only for the property tax-financed operating and capital budgets, but also for the sewer and water budgets, all totaling about $19 million. About 63% of that total is from property taxes, with the other $7 million coming from fees, charges and grants.
Your Town department heads did a wonderful job last year in their quest for outside fund-ing. Grants were received for enhanced port security, replacement of our Fire Department's agng air packs and compressor, repairing our storm damaged boat ramp, planting street trees, renovating Glen Mary Wading Pool and purchasing body armor for the Police Department. Altogether, these grants totaled nearly $600,000. A word of thanks is especially in order to the Bar Harbor Village Improvement Association for their Glen Mary contributions.
We were also able to finalize a lease for the new cell phone antennae atop the downtown Fire Station last year. For the next fifteen years, we'll be getting $21,600 (plus COLA) from Verizon Wireless, which we plan to spend on public safety building renovations and maintenance.
While it had no effect on the 2008 budget, future budgets will be eased due to the efforts of the Cruise Ship Study Task Force this year. Under the leadership of Councilor Paul Paradis, the Task Force recommended implementation of our new cruise ship per passenger fees, which are expected to generate over $400,000 per year to help pay for cruise ship and other tourism related expenses.
Unfortunately, last year wasn't just about increased revenues, we learned of some hefty expenses as well. Exceptionally heavy snowstorms caused equally lofty snow removal bills last year. Fortunately, we had sufficient fund balance to cover the shortfall. In a similar vein, the premature failure of the engine in our #3 fire pumper raised expenses unexpectedly. This was one of those times, as with our crashed police cruiser, when saving money to a reserve account in advance of the need really paid off. On short notice, funds were transferred from one of the other fire truck accounts to replace Engine #3 earlier than expected.
I also spent considerable time last year negotiating contracts, not only with our three bar-gaining units, but also with three of our seven department heads, who are also on three year con-tracts. The union contracts were completed amidst heightened inflation concerns in early Sep-tember, only to be followed by the stock market crash and recession that made those raises appear overly generous. The wage adjustments really were quite fair, given the high petroleum and food prices at the time, but only time will tell how they work out over the life of the contracts.
At year end, Council was struggling with an engineering report analyzing our alternatives for meeting the Federal Long Term 2 Enhanced Surface Water Treatment Rules and the Stage 2 Disinfection By-Products Rule. They agreed that the best and most cost effective, long term solu-tion was to eliminate chlorine disinfection of our drinking water by changing over to ultraviolet light, with chloramination as a secondary method of disinfection. Unfortunately, the substantial cost of regulatory compliance, together with the expense of replacing our worn-out watermains, will require further water rate increases as we move toward implementation.
But enough about money and budgets, I also dedicated much of my 2008 efforts to organizational development. Following initial discussions about the best form of government for our community, Council decided to look into the formation of a Charter Commission, which is the statutory method for a municipality to review how its local government is organized. They took the issue to the voters at the November election, who endorsed it, and by December we had a nine member Charter Commission sworn into office and a public hearing set for January. I'm sure you'll be hearing much more about their work over the coming months.
Council also started a new outreach effort for its boards and committees this year. What came to be known as Committee Consultations are designed to offer each of a dozen different boards, committees, commissions and task forces a chance to meet one-on-one with the Council to discuss what they are up to, what they would like to see changed and how Council can help them achieve their goals. Depending on each committee's level and type of activity, consultations are held on a quarterly, semi-annual or as-needed basis. Although considerable effort is required on everybody's part to schedule, prepare for and attend these sessions, early reports indicate that they have been well received and are helpful to all the parties in improving their efforts on behalf of the Town.
Regional outreach was also an important part of our 2008 efforts, especially for Councilor Bob Garland, who volunteered to serve on the Union 98 school Reorganization Planning Committee. By now, most readers will be familiar with the new Alternative Organization Structure of our schools, and Bob spent scores of hours in meetings and doing his homework to bring us into conformity with the governor's school consolidation program. Council heard many a report from Bob, week after week and month after month, until the job was done. Thank you Mr. Garland.
As chair of the League of Towns, I also participated in regional efforts to improve the State's redesign of the Route 3/102/198 intersection at the head of the island, expand wireless Internet access for the island, reexamine the funding formula for the MDI High School, and finalize our seven-town mutual aid compact for emergency management. Your public safety chiefs and I also spent considerable time with other local governments, MDI hospital staff, National Park officials and Jackson Lab employees refining emergency management plans to ad-dress the inevitable, even if not imminent, influenza pandemic which historically strikes about three times every hundred years or so. The PanFlu Working Group, as we have come to be called, held its second MDI PanFlu Forum at the MDI Biological Laboratory this fall. Other Town emergency management efforts included training of all Town officials, from Councilors right on down, so we could become National Incident Management System compliant. Without such training, the Town would be ineligible for disaster recovery funds and Homeland Security grants such as those received last year.
Quite a few projects fell under the heading of "safeguarding our citizen's interests" this year. Repeated challenges to unrestricted public access to The Bar were ended last June when Town Meeting approved condemnation of the Bridge Street and Bar Road rights-of-way, clearing-up any property title appeals permanently, we hope. Council and staff also struggled to defend various park boundary and shore access rights at several locations around Town and will continue to do so to make sure these public spaces continue to serve those who purchased them in the first place.
It has been a busy year. Thank you to all who have worked so hard on the Town's behalf over the last year and, especially, to those who have helped me do my best to serve you, the citizens of Bar Harbor.
Respectfully submitted,
Dana
Dana J. Reed
Town Manager