Data

Subcommittee Report
The data subcommittee was formed early in the Budget Committees process, and met initially on July 3, 2012 to discuss what data should be collected to meet the City Councils charge to the Budget Committee. The committee had decided at its June 21 meeting to examine Barre City, Bennington, Brattleboro, Burlington, Hartford, Middlebury, Rutland City, St. Albans, St. Johnsbury, Springfield, Waterbury and Winooski for comparative purposes. David Beatty brought a five-year analysis of Montpeliers general fund budget, across every major category and subcategory, which he had compiled prior to the meeting. The committee discussed assembling similar data for other towns and the difficulty in constructing comparable comparisons from annual reports, audited financial statements or town budgets, given the wide variability among towns in assigning expenditures to budget categories. The general consensus was to focus the comparison on five major budget categoriesPolice, Fire, Public Works, Debt, and Otherand to limit the preliminary analysis to nine towns: Barre City, Brattleboro, Burlington, Hartford, Middlebury, Montpelier, Rutland City, St. Albans, Springfield, and Winooski. The next phase was accessing a variety of town reports and financial statement to assemble a spreadsheet comparing the selected towns across budget categories identified at the previous meeting. As before, questions arose on comparability of data across towns. Aside from obvious differences that can result in large discrepancies in spending, (e.g., a paid versus volunteer fire department), local decisions on how to allocate expenditures, such as salaries and benefits, render comparisons on individual budget items of questionable value. Volatility of some budget expenditures from one year to the next was noted, and the group suggested using a three-year average when available to provide a more accurate picture of a towns expenditures. Subcommittee members also discussed the need to find other metrics that would allow statistical comparisons, an idea first proposed in the larger committee, and brainstormed a preliminary list: town population, daytime population, median household income, miles of paved road and sidewalk, and various property tax statistics. The data subcommittee was producing an expanding volume of comparative data, as well as metrics that could more accurately capture an apples-to-apples comparison of town budget data. However, there was a growing unease among all members of the subcommittee as to the value of the data and what reliable conclusions could be drawn from it. Subcommittee members: David Beatty, Jeff Francis, Nolan Langweil, Susan Mesner, Larry Mires, Susan Zeller