By Ward Peck

Editor

    The new Cape Elizabeth Town Council has charted an
ambitious set of goals for the coming year and it hopes to accomplish
these goals while maintaining fiscal discipline.

    At a workshop held following its inaugural Dec. 11
meeting, the council debated a series of policy goals that will guide
its actions over the next twelve months, including several fundraising
campaigns for the Spurwink Church and Fort Williams; deciding how to
consolidate emergency dispatching with other local governments; making
waste and recycling collection more efficient and cost-effective for
the town’s taxpayers; finalizing a plan to install two new traffic
lights in the town center; initiating on-line and credit card payment
systems for fee collection and finding a new use for the former Day One
building at Fort Williams among other goals.

    The council hopes to accomplish this by maintaining
its overarching goal to “ensure that quality of services and programs
are maintained with as minimal impact as possible on the property tax
rate.”

    Council members struggled with, and ultimately left
unresolved exactly how to determine expenditure targets that will guide
the coming budget process. More than two years ago, the then council
pledged to limit the growth of spending to a formula based upon
inflation and growth. During the past two budge cycles, the council was
generally successful in adhering to these targets. However, several
factors have led the council to question this approach in the upcoming
budget deliberations.

    In a memo to councilors, Town Manager Michael
McGovern noted the current Consumer Price Index (CPI), used in the past
to target spending increases, is 1.3 percent, while personnel cost for
the municipality are expected to rise four percent. Personnel costs
account for half of the municipal budget, according to McGovern. He
said, personnel costs account for an even higher share of the school
budget.

    “Keeping the budget within this level will be very
challenging for the municipal needs and for the school needs.”

    Additionally, councilors who took the growth
“pledge,” (Anne Swift-Kayatta, David Backer and Mary Ann Lynch) now are
a minority on the council.

    While the council seemed to agree to enact spending
targets for town and school administrators, it deferred on exactly how
to determine those targets.

    The council also discussed, and then decided
against, naming an official liaison between the council and the school
board.

    Paul McKenney, running his first meeting as Council
Chair, said he did not see such an arrangement as “productive.” He
noted that former chair David Backer attended school board finance
meetings last year with mixed results.

“The School Board has their job and we have ours,” McKenney said. “We
definitely should have collaborative talks, but it’s not appropriate to
have undue influence.”

    The liaison was one of several ideas about how to
work more amicably with the school board as the budget process moves
forward.

    Although no official liaison will exist, newly
elected councilors Jim Rowe (a former school board member) and Sara
Lennon, both of whom expressed a desire for a more collaborative
relationship between the two bodies, agreed to attend school board
meetings.