As discussion opened about the fiscal 2010 municipal budget, Finance Committee Chairman Bob Thurston told those gathered at the Dec. 16 Finance Committee meeting that, even after level funding all budgets, there is “about $300,000 worth of deficit that needs to be made up.”
Members of the Board of Selectmen, School Committee, Department of Public Works, Library Trustees, Council on Aging, Board of Health, and Economic Development Analysis Team listened as Thurston explained that the most important part of conversations between the Finance Committee and the departments in the upcoming weeks would be the impact of the constrained department budgets on services to the public.
In November, Town Administrator Tim Bragan distributed to department heads the “Fiscal 2011 Budget Memorandum,” which emphasized that budgets are to be targeted at “level funding “ (same dollar total as last year), not at “level service” (same services but budgeted at next year’s costs). If there are unavoidable cost increases, such as contractual salary increases, the memo said, they must be offset by reduced expenses elsewhere, reduced personnel, or by finding new revenue sources. Further, the memo explained, increases in employee benefits costs (estimated to be 7 percent higher than this year) for each town department must be covered, without budget increase, by that department’s budget—even though such expenses are not budgeted at the individual department or board level.
The Finance Committee gave department heads specific numbers with which to manage their budgets and to ensure, as Thurston said, that “everybody was on the same page, that people didn’t interpret the budget numbers differently.”
Selectwoman Lucy Wallace questioned the overall budgeting strategy. “If a department, for example public safety, can’t function effectively given their budget, is there a way to talk about it?” she asked.
Committee member George McKenna replied, “The narrative part of the budget is the most important—looking for performance goals and impact; how they [departments] lay out their criteria will be the most important piece of the discussion.”
Thurston said, “We’re going to look at every department … and if we need more in order to provide services, we might have to fund them higher.” He cautioned that such an action would be the exception, adding, “We have to produce a level-funded recommendation to the town. Maybe we would find one service that we can’t provide as a town.”
Finance Committee member Lori Granville asked Wallace, “Should we be asking about an override this year?”
Wallace replied, “I don’t know yea or nay, but people should have the ability to weigh in, the ability to choose, to say ‘I value this service in town.’” Wallace made the point that the quality of services in town affects the value of homes, that residents have made significant investment in homes in Harvard. “You can’t just blow that off for a level-funded budget because that’s all that the town can tolerate,” she said. “The challenge is to get the public to understand the impact of the numbers we are seeing.”
Budgets are due from departments by Jan 4, 2010.
