AMHERST — Amherst’s first budget season under a new form of government may take place without a full Finance Committee reviewing spending for town departments, the schools and the libraries.
Though the Town Council, which began its work in December, has approved the charge, or description of duties, for the nine-member committee, and Council President Lynn Griesemer previously appointed five councilors to vote on budgetary matters, four non-voting residents can’t be added because the council doesn’t yet have a process to appoint them.
At Monday’s meeting, the council’s discussion on filling the remaining Finance Committee seats illustrated the challenges of building a government from scratch and abiding by the language in the new town charter. Members eventually voted unanimously to have the Rules of Procedure Committee recommend how non-voting residents will be appointed to the Finance Committee and to have its Outreach, Communications and Appointments Committee review that recommendation.
Griesemer said it is unfortunate that residents who want to participate in examining budgets may not be able to do so with the fiscal year 2020 budget, even though the council has received a significant number of applications from people wanting to serve.
“It may very well mean that we do not have new resident, non-voting members to Finance until July 1,” Griesemer said of the vote. “It’s an unfortunate gap (for the Finance Committee). In our transition, you just get to these things as fast as you can.”
A public forum on the town budget is scheduled for March 7 at 6:30 p.m. at the Amherst Regional Middle School auditorium, though Town Manager Paul Bockelman doesn’t have to deliver a municipal budget until May 1.
The charter, in fact, doesn’t require residents to participate alongside councilors, but the council allowed it when setting the charge and membership: “The Finance Committee may include members of the public, who shall have a voice but no vote in the Finance Committee’s deliberations.”
And since the committee will have residents, the charter states, the “Council rules shall address the appointment of such members.”
Mandi Jo Hanneke, who served on the Charter Commission that wrote the charter, described this as “an odd quirk.”
“I’m concerned with holding off on these appointments until not only can the Rules Committee come up with a procedure, but then bring that said procedure back to the council,” Hanneke said.
She suggested that Griesemer could appoint residents to serve until June 30 so the budget cycle this year would have a full Finance Committee.
“Waiting on this means we will likely have a budget process going on right now that will not include residents,” said District 4 Councilor Evan Ross. But Ross acknowledged that the council should follow the correct appointment process.
At-Large Councilor Alisa Brewer said she isn’t worried about not having resident Finance members appointed yet, and that appointment rules need to be developed in accordance with the charter.
“I don’t think we’re hurting the budget process to not have these folks in place,” Brewer said.
At-Large Councilor Andy Steinberg, who is chairman of the Finance Committee, said that it can take significant time for people to understand municipal financing, and he wouldn’t support Hanneke’s idea of short-term appointments, observing that in the previous iteration of a Finance Committee it could take a year to learn about the topic.
“It was a process that was helped because there were people on the committee who had been doing it for a while, and we helped as new members came on,” Steinberg said.
Bringing residents on for just a few weeks wouldn’t be a productive use of their time or the committee’s time, Steinberg said.
District 1 Councilor Sarah Swartz agreed that it would be detrimental to have members on for a few weeks and then be gone, adding that there is some merit in waiting until July 1.
The Finance Committee is one of four committees to which the council or its president will be making appointments. The others are the Participatory Budgetary Commission, Ranked Choice Voting Committee, Planning Board and Zoning Board of Appeals.
Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.
