WINDHAM – After weeks of opposing a proposal that would force all seven councilors to participate in the finance committee, Councilor Matt Noel refused to yield at the Jan. 21 Windham Town Council meeting, even as a stubborn majority of Bob Muir, Donna Chapman, Dennis Welch and Tommy Gleason finally overrode Noel’s spirited rejoinders and approved the “council as a whole” committee.

Noel has repeatedly advocated a three-person finance committee, the model that has been used since late 2009. When the council voted on the proposal Tuesday, Noel made it clear that he would not serve on a seven-person finance committee because of the time commitment involved.

“I’m not going to be able to accept that nomination,” Noel said. “I cannot participate in either format. That’s why I’m striving for the process that I’m most comfortable… I respectfully decline the nomination to any finance committee. I simply don’t have the bandwidth – because I personally know, after three years of doing it, what it takes to do it well. The results speak volumes. I wish I could, but I cannot. I simply cannot make that time commitment to this process.”

In a 4-2-1 vote, the council approved the seven-person finance committee, with Noel and Roy Moore opposed, and David Nadeau abstaining.

At the start of the meeting, Noel delivered a nearly 20-minute PowerPoint presentation touting the benefits of a three-person finance committee. Using budget data, Noel compared taxation and fund-balance figures from several years during which the council used the three-person committee, as well as several years when a “council-as-a-whole” model was used.

“The following can be concluded about the three-member council plus finance committee,” Noel said, toward the end of the presentation. “It has controlled spending significantly better. It has eliminated the net use of fund balance during a time of significant revenue reductions. It has stabilized the mil tax rate. No mil tax rate [increase] has occurred. It has increased the financial health of the town without raising taxes. The fund balance of the three-member council finance committee used zero.”

“Do we regress to a council-as-a-whole finance committee with these documented results?” Noel said. “Higher spending than proposed, spending more than collecting, using fund balance of nearly $500,000 per year to balance the budget. Raise taxes each year for these three years under this review, increasing the burden on all of our residents.”

“My answers are simple,” Noel said. “Learn from history, or risk repeating it.”

Chapman, who served on the council prior to 2009 when it employed the council-as-a-whole budgeting approach, disputed Noel’s historical analysis.

“I can’t really see where you’re seeing we did such a terrible job,” she said. “It wasn’t just us. We can only go off of what the town manager presents us and at that time we were way off kilter with some of the numbers in some of the areas that we were spending.”

“Again, going back to Tony [Town Manager Tony Plante] using the fund balance and admitting himself that a few audits ago, that he was trying to move away from that process and it was recommended, and I’m glad to see that he has moved away from it,” she said. “And again if it’s a problem, it’s not just a problem with a seven-council member as a whole, it’s a problem in management.”

After the vote, Muir, who has championed the seven-person approach, said that councilors are not required to attend finance committee meetings under the seven-person model.

“Any one of us can be absent from a meeting or two,” he said. “It does not preclude someone from participating. If they’re not here, they’re not here. If they are here, then it’s fine.”