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Harbor commission chair asks council to move police-boat costs; council asks chief for numbers and tables change
Summary
Abigail Brown, chair of the harbor commission, urged the council to remove police-boat fuel, dockage and maintenance from the Harbormaster budget (funded by mooring fees) and to deposit those costs into the boat-and-motor fund; the council asked the chief to produce exact numbers and tabled the change pending review.
Abigail Brown, chair of the Harbor Commission, told the Portsmouth Town Council that expenses tied to police-boat fuel, dockage and maintenance should not be borne by residents who rent moorings and instead asked the council to move half of those costs into the boat-and-motor fund.
"We would like half the funds removed from these items if you'd be so kind," Brown said, asking the council to separate police-boat expenses from the Harbormaster enterprise fund, which is supported largely by mooring fees.
Councilors sought clarification about the accounting and the potential tax impact of moving costs out of the enterprise fund. Town staff explained that the Harbormaster account is an enterprise fund supported by mooring fees and that shifting expenditures to the police budget would increase the levy-bearing municipal budget unless offset elsewhere.
The police chief cautioned that the precise split is not necessarily a 50/50 split between the two boats and asked for time to confirm engine-size and usage differences before the council enacted a reallocation. Staff reported the Harbormaster reserve balance at roughly $167,000, and council discussion centered on whether reallocating roughly $10,000 in police-related costs would diminish the fund's ability to replace an aging harbor-master boat and motor.
Council members agreed to provisionally approve existing budgets but placed the reallocation request on hold until the chief and finance staff could provide an itemized split and the tax-rate impact for the council to consider at the next meeting.
What council asked staff to do: The council requested a line-item breakdown showing the portion of fuel, dockage and maintenance that is directly attributable to police operations and a calculation of how moving those costs would change the Harbormaster fund balance and the town levy.
