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Politics & Government

Chesterfield Officials Adopt 2012 Budget

Chesterfield Township trustees approved next year's budget during the board's Monday night meeting.

The Chesterfield Township Board of Trustees unanimously approved the 2012 township budget during Monday night’s meeting.

The adopted budget estimates the township to collect roughly $6.5 million in revenue and to spend about $6.7 million next year, projecting a general fund loss of about $200,000.

Chesterfield Township Finance Director Victoria Bauer said before the meeting that no major changes were made to the budget compared to last year, but added the money coming into the township has decreased.

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“Property values have declined, and tax revenues are based off of those declines,” Bauer explained.

A public hearing had been set for Monday night to give residents a chance to speak about the budget to the board. Township resident Lou Nigro told board members he is concerned about the projected losses found in the budget.

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“I’m a little concerned that, with the exception of one of the funds, every other fund projects to spend more than you’re getting in revenue,” he said during the meeting. “The one fund that projected revenue and projected expenses are the same is only because of the transfer from the general fund.”

But, Bauer said covering the losses down the road would likely not cause any major issues.

“All of the funds have the means to cover the projected loss for the 2012 budget,” she said.

Within the past month, the township has decreased its projected general fund loss from about $450,000 to the currently estimated loss of $200,000 by making small cuts from various township departments.

Last month, the three full-time elected officials announced they had . Township Clerk Jan Uglis said Nov. 1 that she felt it would have been unfair to take a pay raise after other township employees had agreed to a four-year , while township Treasurer Linda Hartman cited the public outcry against the requests as part of the reason for the withdrawal.

The sought to increase Supervisor Mike Lovelock’s annual salary from $60,460 to $90,000 and increase the salaries of Uglis and Hartman from $57,820 to $68,500 annually.

Bauer noted that there are no pay raises budgeted for 2012 for any township employee.

Board approves computer equipment upgrade for township offices

During the meeting, board members also unanimously voted to allow about $172,500 to be spent on new servers, an off-site disaster recovery system and supporting hardware and software for the township building and Department of Public Works.

Township Deputy Treasurer Ellen Clark told board members the purchase is necessary because the servers currently being used are about six years old and “past their life expectancy.”

“It allows us also to have emergency back up to our servers and it also has a disaster recovery off site, which we presently do not have,” she said. “If something happened to our servers in this building, we would not be able to be up and running, and as a township we need to be up and running to help assist the community.”

The funds that will be used to cover the computer equipment upgrades are not specifically budgeted for 2011, but Clark said the money is there.

“We have enough budgeted to cover this cost,” she said. “(As part of the 2011 budget), we have $50,000 in the computer equipment area of the budget and we also have some emergency management money. This all will be covered under the township hall and grounds; we’re not going over budget on this, we’ll just move money from township hall and grounds to cover the cost.”

 The upgrades will take about a month to complete.

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