Dewey commissioners propose revisions to set-aside funding

Dewey commissioners voted Dec. 14 to send proposed funding changes to set-aside accounts to the budget and finance committee for review.

Commissioner Gary Persinger proposed the town continue to set aside 8 percent of transfer-tax revenue, 20 percent of building-permit revenue and 5 percent of parking revenue, but he wants to change how the funds are used.

The town currently has seven set-aside accounts: legal and litigation, street infrastructure, comp plan, tech improvement, rainy day, transfer tax recoup, and signs and striping. Some funds have individual bank accounts; others are included with other funds.

Persinger suggested increased allocations to street infrastructure, comp plan and transfer tax recoup, and no additional funds to legal and litigation, tech improvement and rainy day funds. He also suggested a name change for the rainy day fund, currently at $165,000.

“I am suggesting we do away with the rainy day fund,” Persinger said. “By virtue of the name, I would recommend we put [those funds] into the general fund. That should be the source of funds to draw from on a rainy day.”

Persinger and Town Manager Scott Koenig said “rainy day fund” is not a term recognized by auditors.

A policy is needed to determine what the general fund account balance should be, Persinger said. The fund currently has $1.5 million in funds not designated for any particular purpose. That includes about $150,000 in proceeds from the military surplus auction that are designated for the police department.

Commissioner David Moskowitz suggested changing the name of the rainy day fund to stabilization fund. He said he drafted a policy to manage the fund balance and determine its usage.

Commissioner Paul Bauer seemed confused that Koenig and Commissioner Dale Cooke, standing in for an absent Mayor TJ Redefer, had copies of Moskowitz’s draft policy, and he did not. “I’m in the dark about this,” Bauer said.

Moskowitz said he sent the draft as a discussion item to be shared with commissioners. “Stabilization is a new concept being adopted by towns,” he said.

Bauer said drafting the policy undermined commissioners and town committees, but Cooke passed out printed copies of the policy and said Moskowitz had not withheld the document from him. “I withheld it because it’s not part of the discussion. I received it and decided it wasn’t time to hand out because it looked like a partial ordinance,” Cooke said. Striking his gavel, Cooke told Bauer and Moskowitz pointedly, “Drop it. Drop it.”

Koenig said he and commissioners have been speaking about some of the same issues since he was hired. “We continue to overcomplicate this, and it’s causing us to talk about the same things over and over again, and we are getting different discussions mixed together,” Koenig said.

Koenig said he agreed with Persinger’s proposal to reserve $20,000 in the comp plan fund to prepare a required plan update in 2022 and provide some funding for the 2027 full-scale plan. He said the transfer tax recoup tax is swirling around in the general fund balance, causing confusion and mistrust.

“The only way I can effectively get everyone to agree we have reserved the money is if we spend the $5,000 in tech, it gets renamed, and we move the transfer tax recoup from the general fund into that account so we’re not combining these things,” Koeing said.

A stabilization fund is a completely separate discussion, Koenig said, that should be based on the community’s risk-level assessment. He proposed working with commissioners and the budget and finance committee to decide what the balance should be.

Persinger’s plan also calls for a $10,000 allocation from the comp plan set-aside to the planning and zoning commission to implement comp plan recommendations, and to allocate the remaining $72,000 to the street infrastructure account. A new transfer tax revenue contribution would also go to street infrastructure.

The budget and finance committee is scheduled to meet at 4 p.m., Friday, Jan. 10, at the Lifesaving Station. An agenda has not yet been posted.