Merrimack Stuck Their Neck Out And Now They Have A Hickey On It
Saturday, April 12, 2008 at 05:48PM A few years back the Town of Merrimack fell victim to the glittering dream that a Town Charter form of government under RSA 49 was the answer to their overspending woes. With one simple vote they gave away what little financial control they had of that town.
Like fools they hired a former Bedford Town Manager, Keith Hickey, to do a professional job of running the town - along with the supervision of the new Town Council. Smart people – professionals, no more of this sporadic taxpayer revolt stuff in Merrimack. Now we will see what a professional team of municipal experts can do with a budget, forget all that voter participation nonsense with those unanticipated swings in revenue, stopping the “forward progress” of the community.
Did you catch the $1.1 million dollar mistake they just “found” in the new set of professional books “His Highness Hickey” drafted in the fall of 2006? Remember, they hired this character in the spring of 2006. It was supposed to be peaches and ice cream, dandy lions and gumdrops for all.
Well it’s the old “we put the million dollars in the wrong place” story we hear from so many experts in schools and towns all over NH.
But you know what is so enlightening about these mishap stories? The town officials are always afforded the great big benefit of the doubt for a million dollar mistake. On the other hand, let a taxpayer group, or any citizen for that matter, suggest cutting a budget and blood shoots from the eyes of the municipalitarians in charge. How ever will they exist without exactly what the say they want?
Not to worry though. After every professional million dollar mistake, the experts will always find a way to work the mistake into the existing budget without an embarrassing special town meeting where some answers and sweat can be wrung from anyone in charge.
Taxpayers pare a few thousand from a million dollar budget by cutting the left-over funds from the previous year and mayhem breaks out.
Town managers misplace a few million, or don’t produce state mandated financial reports, hide excess funds, pad employees pay, put thousand dollar cherry floors in their office, and the local papers find it slightly interesting.
From now until the end of the fiscal year Merrimack will only be able to pay for emergency expenditures and contractual obligations, according to Town Manager Hickey.
And exactly how is this different than a taxpayer budget cut at one of the past, traditional town meetings – other than having a high priced team of financial experts spewing out excuses?
This is the stuff taxpayer revolts are made of.
Reader Comments (2)
Here's a bit of additional information...
Merrimack still has deliberative sessions so the people still have the power to revolt using that method should they choose.
Regarding the 1.1 million, I've been arguing this one locally already... there is a chance that if the town didn't eliminate the town portion of the budget committee (we still have a school side budget committee) there is a chance it could have been caught, although with the Merrimack budget committee the way it is we hardly do anything so I doubt it would have been caught.
But that said the error actually didn't cost the tax payers in Merrimack anything.. the town UNDER collected by 1.1 million. They put down that they would collect 1.1 million from the state when in fact the 1.1 million was reimbursement next year for money spent locally this year on a bridge project. Since they put it down as revenue the town under collected thinking the 1.1 million would come in from the state this year. This leaves the town with less money then they expected and as a result had to curb spending to keep from running out of money. And I was assured that even though the town screwed up and under collected this year, since they did continue the bridge project they will still get the reimbursement from the state next year as planned so this screw up didn't cost the tax payers anything... if anything it was in our favor.
There's also a real story regarding the council's handling of it all. The council originally voted to have a full audit of the books looking into who made the mistake and seeing if any other errors existed. This was to cost the town about $19k... when it got out that we already have an annual audit in a couple weeks anyway it got people a little upset that we'd waste $19k on something we'll have again in a couple weeks. The board then voted to reconsider which they did and voted down the full audit but then pushed for a partial audit into just this single screw up. The deciding vote refused to support the partial audit saying he would accept full or nothing. Once the partial vote failed he stormed out of the meeting.
On a different note, did you happen to see the union leader's article last week about Keith Hickey running over a teens foot then driving off thinking the teen was trying to attack his car?
Merrimack could be a whole blog site in and of itself.
The short story:
Your charter sloved NOTHING in regards to Merrimack financial problems.
You LOST having a REAL budget committee.
The budget committee could have easily spotted the Hickey debacle.
You are stuck with that Hickey on your kneck and he will probably have to be bought off to get rid of him - after he trains a clone.
Funny how you can find a way to live with $1.1 million less.
Attacking him??? Guilty concience.