Selectmen responded with mock shock at their Tuesday meeting when Town Administrator Tim Bragan informed them that snow removal was costing more than expected this year. And under state law, Bragan said, both the Board of Selectmen and the Finance Committee must approve before a town can go into deficit spending for snow removal.
“If you don’t authorize deficit spending,” he explained, “we don’t plow.”
Bragan said he had told the Finance Committee about the problem almost two weeks earlier, at its Feb. 11 meeting, when snow removal was already overspent by about $200. Costs for the more recent storms, Bragan told the selectmen, would hit in the current payroll period. FinCom, he said, had given its go-ahead for deficit spending.
Selectwoman Lucy Wallace moved that the selectmen authorize deficit spending for snow removal for the rest of the season, and Chairman Stu Sklar asked if there was a second to the motion. A long pause ensued.
The three remaining selectmen—Leo Blair, Ron Ricci, and Ken Swanton—looked at one another. Who would speak up for going over budget? Bragan began to laugh. “Chickens!” exclaimed Wallace, making a clucking sound.
Another moment passed and then Selectman Leo Blair chuckled and seconded the motion. “I was just keeping quiet for fun,” he said.
Selectman Ken Swanton asked where the town would get the money. Bragan said it would come from the reserve fund if that was sufficient; otherwise the cost would go on next year’s budget. But for both the 2008 ice storm and the 2011 Halloween storm, he said, the town had received federal emergency assistance, and that is still a possibility for this month’s snow costs.
The selectmen voted unanimously to approve deficit spending to continue plowing the roads of Harvard this winter.
