Town puts brakes on planning board road-trip request

No money in tight budget for members to attend planning conference in October

Due to budget constraints, the town won't pay for planning board members to attend a planning and zoning conference in Lincoln in October.Cost of the conference, put on by the state office of Energy and Planning, is $50 per person, and three board members Patricia Sell, vice chair Martha Tobin and alternate John Edgerton had expressed an interest in attending.Town Manager Earl Sires denied the request.That decision angered at least one planning board member, Sell, who had asked Town Planning Director Tom Irving to make the request to Sires.Sell said that as a new member, she felt that the conference would provide useful information and education to all board members, new or not.Irving's request was denied by Sires. Irving relayed the message via e-mail to board members:Please be advised that the request for the town to reimburse planning board members' registration fees for the upcoming [state Office of Energy and Planning] Fall Planning and Zoning Conference has been denied, wrote Irving. The denial drew a sharp e-mail retort to The Conway Daily Sun from Sell.This is absolutely absurd," Sell wrote. "The power to make the decision lies within the planning board not Earl Sires. Given the amount of time planning board members volunteer countless hours to perform our job, by not allowing educational training relevant to our position is selfish and unwarranted. By majority vote of the planning board, we can attend if we so chose.She quoted RSA: 674:1 Duties of the Planning Board. "Members of the planning board, when duly authorized by the board as a whole, may attend municipal planning conferences or meetings, or hearings upon pending municipal planning legislation. The planning board may by majority vote authorize the payment of reasonable expenses incident to such attendance."Sires by phone Friday that escalating costs led him to deny the request. He also forwarded a copy of an e-mail that he sent to all town department heads Aug. 11, citing the budgetary constraints facing the town:[Finance Director] Lucy Philbrick informs me that at the end of July there was only a 1.1 percent cushion ($90,530) in the total budget. At the end of July last year there was a 5.6 percent cushion ($420,820). This slim margin is particularly worrisome since we do not know what is going to happen to the price of fuel and heating or what the weather is going to be during the last part of this budget year. Consequently, we are placing a spending freeze on all discretionary spending. Please review any proposed purchase with Lucy. In addition, we will be reviewing each departmental budget with the aim of reducing 2008 expenditures. Lucy will contact you to schedule the review.Sires told The Conway Daily Sun he is not ruling out taking a new look at travel for town board members as the year progresses and the budget picture becomes better defined.It simply is a judgment call. We have had pavement costs going up and several other factors, said Sires. We are not buying new equipment; we are holding the line until we see how things develop, he said.He said the town limiting travel, not cutting it out altogether.[Welfare officer] B.J. Parker is going to Berlin [this week], for example, where she will receive some credits can use for food for the welfare program. So, we encourage training. This has nothing to do with the planning board or who wants to go to a session we have served notice to department heads that things are tight, said Sires.He said the town has made other reductions, such as in the schedule for planned paving projects and in the recreation department.Town revenue is down, he said, in such areas as car registrations, as people are driving older cars or are buying more fuel efficient, less expensive smaller cars that cost less to register.This is not to say we would not approve training seminars later in the year we will continue to monitor our revenue and costs, said Sires.