Present: Donald Davidson, Jerry Greene (Selectmen Representative), Cary Hughes (Chair), William Keefe, Daniel Levesque, Donald McGettigan, David Tierney, Mark Whitehill
1.  The meeting was called to order at 7:30 p.m.

2. The Road Agent met with the committee to discuss his budget requests.
• He explained that the cost of signs was based on the need to replace a very large number of missing or damaged stop signs and yield signs throughout Wilton.
• Contracted services will cover the cost of cleaning drains, roughly one third of the total, in 2005. The final third of the drains will be completed in 2006. Thereafter all the drains will be cleaned on an annual maintenance schedule.
• The resurfacing budget will be used to apply a base or overlay as needed on various roads in the town. Roads in need of this work include Abbot Hill Road, Dale Street, Badger Farm Road, and portions of Isaac Frye Highway. No decisions have yet been made as to which streets to do first or in what order. That will be decided after the winter. We will need to plan on an annual budget of about $160,000 for the resurfacing budget to keep up with the fifty five miles of town roads.
• The Town will need an industrial strength lawn mower to be able to mow all the cemeteries and parks in town efficiently in terms of man hours involved and mower fuel. The mower would have a deck width appropriate to fit safely between headstones. The cost is estimated at $6,500. The Selectmen support this recommendation.
• The Highway Equipment Capital reserve Fund should be increased at the rate of $75,000 per year in anticipation of needing to replace the road grader in three to four years. In that time it will probably become necessary to replace the oldest truck in the fleet.
• $25,000 was recommended for the Bridge Fund Capital Reserve to plan for future bridge replacements that will need to be completed in one to two years.
• We should consider a warrant article for $17,000 for Culvert Bridge.
• We should reconsider the Marden Road Warrant Article from 2004 at $60,000 for the 2005 budget as well as a project for Isaac Frye Highway between Badger farm Road and the Milford Town Line at about $120,000. There are funds set aside from the developers fees for this purpose.

3. The Police Chief met with the committee to discuss his budget requests. We discussed the need to increase officer’s salaries to avoid the problem of training then losing officers to other towns. This costs the town too much money to continue that practice. We discussed the biannual replacement purchase of a new cruiser which will cost approximately $39,000 due to the need to cover the base price plus the cost of the equipment that goes into a vehicle today. The equipment in the cruiser being replaced is fifteen years old and was meant to last seven to eight years originally. It is not always in working order and is increasingly difficult to maintain. We discussed the telephone system to be replaced. We requested the Chief to obtain two more bids for the telephone system. We discussed the other high cost items such as the railing for the Police Station and the computer upgrades. Many of the items seem reasonable with the exception of the Tasers requested. Concerns about safety of the equipment for the intended targets and related issues were discussed while concern for the safety of the officers involved in threatening situations was seen as equally important.

4. The meeting adjourned at 9:00 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Cary A. Hughes
Chair, Wilton Budget Committee