Groton – Town Councilors have cut nearly in half the city's funding request for roads, continuing a battle that has gone on for years about how much the town should pay to maintain city roads.

"It's an insult to the city residents and it will mean devastating cuts here," City Mayor Marian Galbraith said. The city highway department has nine employees. "Every minute of their time is accounted for," she said.

The city had asked for $1.92 million for road maintenance in the coming fiscal year, slightly less than the $2 million in the current budget. During budget deliberations on Saturday, town councilors cut the city's request by $830,000, Galbraith said. Town Councilors also cut the city's police budget request by $74,500, for a total of $904,856 in cuts to the two city departments, Galbraith said.

The rationale for the road funding cut was that Groton town spends about $35 per square mile to maintain town roads compared to about $70 per square mile in the city, Town Councilor Bruce Flax said. If the city provided information on exactly where its money is spent, he would have supported the request, he said.

"When you're driving down a road from the town into the city, the road doesn't change," Flax said. "It shouldn't cost twice as much because it's in the city."

He predicted the city would take the dispute to arbitration.

Galbraith said the city would go to arbitration, but has to figure out what to do in the meantime and doesn't want to lay off people. The city challenged the town over a $237,000 cut in the 2014 fiscal year and got back all but $50,000 of the money back, Galbraith said. The town also had to pay legal fees, she said.

The town and city also are battling on another front. Flax and Town Councilor Harry Watson filed a complaint on April 1 with the state's Freedom of Information Commission, after city councilors walked out of a scheduled joint meeting with the town on March 30. Flax said the city councilors left the joint meeting, stepped into a conference room in the Town Hall Annex and closed the door.

City councilors were upset after they saw the town attorney at the joint meeting, Flax said.

Galbraith said in an email that city councilors left the scheduled meeting on March 30 because "it became apparent immediately before the meeting and was confirmed during the meeting that the town's attorney was there because the town council considered this meeting as prelude to an arbitration."

But Watson said the town attorney lives in Groton and was seated in the audience. Regardless, the city can't meet without proper legal notice, he said.

"They should not be meeting in a room, with a quorum, talking about anything, and making a decision about anything without the public being notified," Watson said. "It's wrong, period."

Thomas Hennick, public information officer for the state's Freedom of Information Commission, said Monday it would take at least a month to review the complaint as it receives many complaints. If the commission determines it has jurisdiction over the matter, it will place the case on a docket and assign a mediator to try to resolve the dispute, he said.

The town and city have clashed over highway spending for years. Last year, a committee of three city councilors and three town councilors met to discuss budgets and decide on the proper amount the town should pay for city street maintenance.

On Dec. 15, town councilors Rich Moravsik, Bob Frink, and Watson, who served on the committee for the town, sent a letter to three city councilors saying the city's maintenance cost per mile is higher than the town's.

"The town wants to resolve this perennial budget dispute once and for all," the letter said, adding that the town would give the city highway funding comparable to what the town gets, but it wouldn't pay 95 percent more.

City Deputy Mayor William Jervis and councilors Lawrence Gerrish and Keith Hedrick, who served on the committee for the city, wrote back Jan. 24 that they would discuss "actual amounts" needed for road repair roads but not an "an arbitrary cost per mile."

Galbraith said there's no standard for road maintenance per mile; it depends on the use, location and traffic on the road.

d.straszheim@theday.com

Twitter: @DStraszheim