Saugus Town Meeting warrant article creating controversy

SAUGUS-A warrant article for the Oct. 27 special Town Meeting asks for an $800,000 reduction in the Group Health Insurance line item, but Selectman Stephen Horlick wants to know where the money is going exactly.The funding request is aimed at paying off the debt incurred by Kasabuski Arena, but Horlick said that isn’t an acceptable answer.”When we pay off Kasabuski, the money is not leaving the town,” he said. “It’s not like there are $800,000 in bills going out the next day. It’s money that has been spent.”Horlick said the way he sees it, that means the town has $800,000 in play.Town Manager Andrew Bisignani said that is untrue.”We paid the bills, we’ve paid them over the last six years, but we didn’t have enough in the (Kasabuski) account,” he said. “We overdrew and now the Department of Revenue has said you have to pay that account back.”Bisignani said that money would come from a surplus in the group health account.Horlick said the argument is really one only on paper and not actual money. However, he said, if the healthcare account is reduced by $800,000 that would amount to actual dollars that could be spent or, he suggests, put in the town’s stabilization account.”He’s just moving $800,000 to cover a deficit but where does it actually go?” he asked. “If it does stay in town, why doesn’t it go into the stabilization fund so we can get our bond rating down?”In 2006, the town’s bond rating dipped from A1 to A2, then in February 2007 it dropped again to BAA1.Bisignani said Horlick misunderstood the situation.”If you overdraw your bank account by $800,000 you have to pay the bank back to even things out,” he said. “We have to pay the $800,000 and the DOR stated that it is OK.”Horlick said the confusion over the article is another reason why he asked Bisignani to submit his articles for the warrant at least a week prior to it being closed.”It would give us time to go over them one by one and (Bisignani) could answer any questions,” he said.Instead, Bisignani routinely takes advantage of a precedent-setting practice that allows him to keep the warrant open for the manager to insert articles at the last minute.Bisignani said in terms of the special Town Meeting he needed the warrant kept open so he could finalize two articles, both of which had reports tied to them that weren’t received until the end of last week. One report dealt with settling the Kasabuski Arena deficit.