By Nate Jones

Staff Writer 

On July 1, the phone at the other end of 799-8581 – a local emergency phone number resident Ellen Enna said was drilled into her as a child – will not ring in Cape Elizabeth.

“I can tell you quite safely the sky will not fall, but what I can promise you is that the change in service will be immediate and tangible,” Maine Association of Police Executive Director Paul Gaspar told the Cape Elizabeth Town Council on Monday. “There are some things that are very difficult to put a price tag on.”

Gaspar, a South Portland resident, joined dozens of Cape Elizabeth residents to voice their support for maintaining a local dispatch service. Before the meeting, resident Helen Mainville said she gathered roughly 640 resident signatures in support of keeping the service.

“[Town records] specifically say the council voted to affirm their commitment [to local dispatch] until 2011,” she said. “Honor your commitment.”

In assembling next year’s $8.5 million municipal budget, Town Manager Michael McGovern eliminated the service and proposed merging with South Portland and Portland’s regional dispatch center. According to his preliminary budget proposal, shifting to a regionalized service could reduce next year’s municipal budget by more than $130,000. 

McGovern said he favored the shift for reasons beyond financial benefits.

“A team of dispatchers will be on the line rather than just one. They will have better software that provides them with directions and caller history,” he said. “There will be no delay in response times and the whole process will be more seamless.”

For some councilors, the decision to convert to a regionalized dispatch had more to do with integrity than fiscal responsibility.

“We’re sending a public safety element of our town to an entity that considers it a revenue stream,” Councilor Penny Jordan said. “Then things start to change.”

Council Chairman Jim Rowe also voted against the municipal budget based on the fact that he was one of five current councilors who signed a three-year contract with dispatchers in 2008. 

“We told them they would have a job in 2011,” he said. “My word was given and that’s what I’m going through with. We see flip-flopping every day in local and state government and frankly, that makes me crazy. My integrity is not for sale, even for a savings of $127,000.”

Local dispatch is one expenditure McGovern eliminated from his municipal budget for a total proposed reduction of 3.08 percent from last year’s adopted municipal budget. Other reductions include changes to police overtime scheduling, combining the town clerk and assistant town manager positions and changing the hours of the Recycling Center. According to the proposal, reductions total nearly $271,000 from last year’s municipal budget.

The council passed the proposed municipal budget in a 4 – 2 vote with Rowe and Jordan in the minority. 

Combined with a proposed $19.7 million school budget, McGovern’s reductions would have led to a zero percent increase to taxes in Cape Elizabeth – until Alan Hawkins learned the town’s General Purpose Aid funding from the state was being reduced by more than $500,000 next year.

To subsidize the $500,000 shortfall, the council discussed transferring $200,000 from the town’s undesignated surplus to the school’s general fund for the upcoming fiscal year. Matched by more than $160,000 the school has obtained through an unexpected zero percent increase in health insurance rates, the remainder of the funding shortfall will result in a 0.6 percent tax increase, McGovern said. 

“I commend the town council and the school board for preparing a zero percent tax increase budget, they have really been thrown a half-a-million-dollar sandbag by the state,” resident David Hillman said. “We have real big dollars we have to deal with.”

Others supported the council’s efforts toward preparing a zero percent tax increase budget, but joined resident Frank Prince, who said he would have preferred they come up with methods other than reducing dispatch and transferring town funds to reduce the overall budget.

“[Gov. John] Baldacci did not fire teachers, he fired administrators,” Prince said. “You have a $20 million [school] budget, I can’t believe for a moment there isn’t 5 percent being misused in there. Make a budget that doesn’t rely on the state. If the state comes in with money, that’s a surplus.”

While a majority of residents supported the council’s efforts to reach a zero percent tax increase for next year, some were skeptical of the council’s authority to use town funding for school expenses.

“Undesignated funds are for emergencies that happen in an already budgeted year, or are used as reserves,” resident Laurel Grassin-Drake said. “To actually plan to use contingency funds is irresponsible. We will have to replace those funds, they are not a savings. It’s confusing and I don’t think many people understand it.”

The council unanimously supported the transfer, although some acknowledged it was not the ideal way to deal with the funding shortfall. 

“I said I supported a transfer only because it was during a school year and it was an emergency,” Councilor Anne Swift-Kayatta said. “I have taken myself to task. The $500,000 the state just pulled out from under us wasn’t in this fiscal year, but it was entirely a total sandbag job. I’m willing to do this even though it flies in the face of good budgeting practice.” 

The council unanimously tabled a vote on the proposed school budget until April 30. According to the proposed budget schedule, the vote will be followed by a public school budget validation referendum May 12.