Staff Writer

Kennebunk selectmen met with the budget board Feb. 3 to continue discussing plans for reorganizing town departments, as well as begin discussing a zero percent increase budget for the 2009 fiscal year. 

Town Manager Barry Tibbetts said the economic forecast made by Professor Charles Colgan [University of Southern Maine Muskie School of Public Policy] estimates economic down turn with flat economic growth and recovery will not occur until the third quarter of 2010.

Kennebunk is seeing signs of the downturn with a 12 percent decrease in revenue and 4.1 percent cut in town expenditures, Tibbetts said, and the goal for the upcoming budget is a zero percent increase in the budget, including operational and capital expenditures. 

Taking into consideration all the cuts and decreases, Finance Director Joel Downs said the total net budget to be discussed is between $6.8 and $6.9 million, about $5,000 less than the current budget year. 

The area of the budget that produced the most discussion among both boards, as well as Social Service Director Wanda Cannell and resident Rachel Phipps, was Tibbetts’s proposal to reorganize town departments, merging the social service director with the front office manager position. 

Cannell said when she was hired for the position more than 20 years ago, she was asked to do more for  residents. She said she now helps with general assistance including helping residents with shelter, heat and food, but also spends time working with elderly filling out applications and helping residents navigate various social services, seeing eight to nine residents a day and finishing the majority of her paperwork at home. 

“I often work through lunch because there has been so many people lately, and if it’s somebody who is hungry or needs fuel I can’t tell them, ‘See you in two weeks,’” Cannell said. “I’m seeing a lot of new people, people just like us who have lost their jobs. It’s taking them three to four weeks to get through the unemployment lines.”

Selectman Bob Higgins asked Tibbetts to speak with towns of similar population to Kennebunk to see how their social service program is handled. 

Bill Ward, a member of the budget board, asked Tibbetts to reconfigure the departments to maintain Cannell’s position.

Tibbetts was expected to present feedback from other communities and a different configuration to selectmen and the budget board to consider Feb. 12, after the Post press time. 

“Hats off to you Barry to try and reconfigure [the departments]. This is one situation with so much daily dealing and specialized work we need a different configuration,” Ward said. 

“I looked at the budget and various positions. What I’ve seen work in other towns is a general assistance position with a front office manager. This position made sense,” Tibbetts said. “I can certainly take a look at different configurations.”