In a 3-hour meeting filled with spirited debate about core priorities for Portsmouth, the Town Council tonight provisionally approved a budget for the coming fiscal year capping transfer station stickers at the current $100 and retaining lifeguards at Sandy Point — all while still coming in about $4K below the S3050 cap.

The transfer station is run as an "enterprise fund," which means that the revenue generated from stickers should match the cost of operations, and projections by the Town Finance Director Dave Faucher had pegged the necessary fee at about $147, a number that was contested by Judy Staven, chair of the Solid Waste Committee.

While acknowledging that the estimates are still "a work in progress," Staven cautioned the Council that raising the fee could work against their goal. "The whole plan of the sticker was to reduce our solid waste," said Staven, and raising the fee risked "Getting to the point of diminishing returns."

According to figures provided by Staven, the projected cost of operations is $551,361, compared to the town finance estimate of $657,000 that drove the $147/sticker fee. But even $551K was too much for Councilor Dennis Canario.

"I am against raising the fees for using the trash compactor station," he said. "It's out of reach for a lot of people in town. My approach is to scale back the operation." His motion, which passed unanimously after much discussion, was to cap the expenditures at $500K (which would result in no change to the sticker cost) and manage the station to that number.

Tailgunner Gleason tried to slip in an amendment requiring the schools to recycle, but Council President Peter McIntyre refused to entertain the motion. "I'm not going to do that without the schools here," he said.

In the other major action tonight, a protracted exploration of the money allocated to the Melville Campground resulted in a decision to shift a portion to pay for lifeguards at the Sandy Point Beach. The details are not as interesting as the alignment: Gleason made the accusation that "some members of the Council have been trying to steal money from Melville from some time," while the rest of the Council seemed willing to negotiate a balance. Ultimately though, the decision was unanimous (I suspect the fact that making the shift brought the budget below the cap might have been a contributing factor.)

And then there was civic support. Eric Brady of the Portsmouth Arts Guild represented the only "A" group to see their funding slashed, and he didn't come away with anything tonight either, as the Council held the line.

While unsuccessful, former Councilor Bill West made an impassioned plea for consideration of all the "B" groups — folks like the Samaritans, Visiting Nurse Services, and Newport County Mental Health, all of whom had their contributions cut to zero in the tentative budget.

"I'm here to talk about civic support in total," said West, "But also to talk about the people in the community who need your support. Unemployment in Portsmouth is 8%. These are the people that are going to need some of these services. These are the people that are falling through the cracks; we should not forget about them. These people are going to need our help, we are a community, and that's what a community does."

There just wasn't wiggle room in the budget. There was a brief discussion around possibly splitting some of the $4K left under the cap among some groups in B and C, but eventually the vote was unanimous to leave everyone at zero.

In addition to attempting to tack recycling onto the schools as an unfunded mandate, Gleason also opposed the school warrants, (Item #27 sub II, if you're playing along at home) the lone dissenter in a 6-1 vote.

I hope that school supporters in this town someday realize the political power they hold and vote with their interests. In many ways, they — no, we, since I include myself here — are like Chief Broom in One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. A slumbering power unaware of our capacity to effect change. It's not a Democratic issue or a Republican issue. The problem is *our* core mission: caring for our kids. We are so invested in taking care of them, enjoying our time with them, reading with them, playing with them, so worn out from ferrying them from karate to scoccer to Little League that we don't have the time or energy to sit through three-hour meetings just in case there will be that one moment where Gleason tries to slip in a motion to further burden the district.

It's not bad enough that she accuses the schools of "institutional neglect," or claims that she could "come up with 10 more ideas" to save $100K but "it's not her job," or dismisses the Berkshire Report as "thoroughly influenced."

She voted against the warrants. She voted against the schools. It does not get more plain than that.