BRUNSWICK

Town Councilors Thursday held a brief meeting to square up municipal accounts before the end of the fiscal year.

A total of $206,500 was shuffled between accounts with surplus or deficit, including $147,000 to cover shortfalls in the administrative budget. In that amount, $50,000 was to pay the contract for the town’s hired lobbyist, Augusta law firm Preti Flaherty.

“The bulk of the transfer is to cover legal expenses,” councilor Sarah Brayman said today. When the 2014 budget was being assembled, town accountants did not have the final two months of legal bills, so Finance Director John Eldridge had to estimate the expense and then make corrections.

Some accounts yielded unexpected savings. A relatively light winter left Public Works with $80,000 unspent, in addition to almost $60,000 in fire department, risk management and police department surplus.

The meeting lasted nine minutes by unofficial clock.

Although the meeting was placed on the municipal website calendar Thursday, no other notice was sent to press or public. The gallery included no media and very few members of the public, due to lack of notice that it was being held.

Brayman, who received complaints that the meeting had not been publicized, said she was concerned about public perception.

“We (councilors) knew about it for a while because we do this every year, it’s a close-out meeting,” she said. “But I feel terrible that people didn’t know about it. It’s distressing … This is a difficult budget time when we’re raising taxes. Even if these are minor things, people get sus- picious when its about money.”

“Nothing in print was given, this is a concern to me,” said resident Bob Judd, who attended the meeting. “I’d like to take serioously the imperative to be an informed community member, but this kind of action makes it pretty hard.”

jtleonard@timesrecord.com

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