03/10/1988 FINANCE COMMITTEE Minutes

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Finance Committee Minutes March 10, 1988 Page 2. he felt the Assessors should press for a change in the law. The Assessors have submitted three Articles. One Article seeks Town approval of Clause 41C of Chapter 59, Section 5 of the Massachusetts General Laws. This Article pertains to property tax abatement to citizens of 70 years or older who have owned their home for at least 5 years and have been Massachusetts residents for 10 years and meet certain financial requirements. The second Article submitted seeks the Town approval to create a clerical full-time position. The salary of this position would be $13,533. This Article would mean that the Assessors would have a part-time clerk plus a full-time clerk. The Assessors feel that they are currently understaffed. The average number of parcels handled this year was 600 in addition to this the staff does activities that other communities give out to contractors. ' Carl expressed his belief that he could not see both a part-time and full-time position. Carl also noted that he thought the Town was losing a good source of revenue by not selling deed copies. He feels they could double their income by selling deeds, however Assessors feel they do not have the personnel to do this. The Assessors are presently taking in $3,500 and the Assessors feels that if they get a full-time person it would just about fund itself. The third Article seeks the Town to vote to raise and appropriate or. transfer from avialable funds the sum of $19,000 for the scheduled FY90 revaluation or take any action thereon. The Assessors Department FY89 budget figures were submitted as follows: Director of Assessing $36,258.56 Asst. Assessor 20, 198.90 Office Manager 20,830.00 Clerk - part-time 6,446.'52 Wage 6,500.00 Board of Assessors 11,980.47 The Assessors explained the $4,500 mapping expense. The Assessors maps �11 need to be redrawn each time there is a new deed and this makes the maps costly to maintain. They also noted that if Mashpee had a town engineer this function would most likely be taken over by the engineering department.. Members of the Library joined the Finance Committee to discuss their FY89 budget. The Librarian noted that she would like to revise her expense figures by $900. This $900 represents a $200 cost of Highwood Water and $700 cost of maintaing the Library photocopier. Heller noted that the cost of •Highwood water seemed to be high for a facility such as a Library and asked the Librarian to investigate what category Highwood had placed them in. The $100 Wage line item was combined with the clerk salary account to read clerk salary/wage and the figure set at $18,922. The revised total of this budget was $68,862 . Expense $29, 160 Clerk Salary/Wage 18,922 . Librarian Salary 20,780