One of the tasks of the Town Council Finance Committee is to take a detailed review of the proposed budget every year and recommend line item appropriation amendments. The Finance Committee this year is composed of councilors Jon Anderson, Don Cushing and myself. In the month of April, between meetings and roundtables, the Finance Committee members have spent approximately 20 hours meeting and making ourselves available to the public to discuss this year’s proposed budget.

Top of residents’ minds this year is the revaluation. This certainly will play a role in some residents’ taxes increasing. The Finance Committee is committed to working with the town and school department to keep this year’s budget increase at a minimum to lighten the impact of this year’s revaluations. What I struggle with as a councilor is, how do we do this when we are already not meeting the current needs of our residents? How can we keep up with growth and continue to provide the level of services residents demand and deserve?

In April, each department came before the Finance Committee to share their budget. Department heads shared the needs of their department and the challenges they are facing. Each department is feeling the strain of our rapid growth but have done an excellent job managing the increasing needs. But how much longer can that continue?

Currently the town has four union contracts under negotiation. This includes the Fire department, Police Department, dispatch and Public Works. Each of these departments has struggled with filling open positions. This is not a problem exclusive to Scarborough; other towns are experiencing the same difficulties finding police officers, firefighters, plow truck drivers and dispatchers. While Scarborough has always had competitive wages for these positions, other towns are now being very aggressive with wage increases, creating a very different environment this year.

Some town departments have gotten creative when it comes to meeting the demands of our growing town. This budget season, I learned the IT industry standard in a complex environment, such as our town, for the help desk to end-user ratio is 1:45. The ratio in Scarborough’s IT department, which manages all of the town departments, including the schools, has a ratio of 1:350. To be able to process the 4,500-plus help desk requests the IT department receives annually they created a program at the high school recruiting students to assist at the help desk and also work toward receiving their A+ certification. And with our growing population, the IT department is looking to expand this program to the middle school.

The school department makes up roughly 70% of our town’s net budget. If you live in Scarborough it’s hard to miss the recent headlines discussing the struggles our schools and other schools throughout the state are facing. With increasing enrollment and demanding student needs, the school department does its best to provide the high level of education many residents move here for. One addition the department is asking for this year is a librarian to service the three primary schools and Wentworth school. There are 1,296 students between these four schools and my son is one of them. When I asked my son this week how often he goes to the library, he told me he’s only been once in the last month. Don’t you think our students deserve better?

We are fortunate enough to live in such a beautiful, thriving town, but the secret is out. As our population increases we will continue to be faced with tough decisions every budget season.

Karin Shupe is a member of the Scarborough Town Council. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Scarborough Town Council.

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