Corrected and updated March 20, 2009
After weeks of hand-wringing, cost-cutting, and more than a little soul-searching, town officials balanced the proposed $19.7 million fiscal 2010 omnibus budget this week. The final hurdle was cleared when the School Committee voted Monday night to close the remaining deficit by reducing its funding request by an additional $75,000, which it will offset by using new income from educating elementary school students living on Devens. That income is also slated to cover 2 percent pay increases for all school employees.
According to Finance Director Lorraine Leonard, about two dozen schoolchildren from Devens are expected to enroll in the Harvard schools next year, split evenly between the elementary school and Bromfield. The older students have been coming to Bromfield for several years, but a new contract with MassDevelopment covers younger children as well.
A week ago, the projected town budget deficit dropped from roughly $300,000 to $73,849 after taking into account all departmental spending cuts up to that time. At that point, the schools had agreed to offset $100,000 in insurance costs, while nonschool spending was down by a total of $142,356. Adding $75,000 to the schools’ total funding cut means a 1.6 percent reduction from the fiscal 2009 appropriation for school spending, significantly less than the 2.8 percent overall reduction for boards under the selectmen’s control (police, fire, Finance Department, Department of Public Works, and Council on Aging) and the 4.2 percent reduction in spending by elected boards such as the library trustees. In dealing with this deficit, the traditional budget allocation of 70 percent for the schools and 30 percent for other boards has shifted to a 55–45 split, said Finance Committee Chairman George McKenna, who added, “I see that as a good thing.”
Of all town departments, the Finance Department has seen the most changes as a result of this budget and of recent fiscal 2009 reductions. Leonard said this week that her department is being completely restructured and is now “down two and a half people,” losing its principal assessor, assistant treasurer, and part-time receptionist. From now on, she said, the town will have an outside assessing service in-house two days a week and an assistant assessor to handle questions that come up on other days. Leonard is looking to hire a full-time employee who would be a “catch-all,” she said: part-time receptionist, assistant tax collector, assistant treasurer, assistant town clerk, and dispatcher for the town van.
Other departments under the selectmen’s control saw some restoration of funding in the past week—and even an increase in one case. At their meeting Tuesday night, the selectmen voted to put the purchase of a new police cruiser back in the budget on the grounds that cutting funding for police cars is not sustainable. They also restored $5,000 for firefighter training and $4,000 for the Department of Public Works, and added $15,000 to the Council on Aging budget, which the board considers to be seriously underfunded. The Finance Committee was to have reviewed these revised funding proposals and approved the total budget at its meeting Wednesday night.
Although the fiscal 2010 budget is apparently settled without undue damage to town services, McKenna warned that “things are not getting better anytime soon” and that they could get a lot worse. But McKenna and Town Administrator Tim Bragan both expressed confidence at a budget meeting last Saturday that the town can successfully weather a long economic downturn, “if we hold to our plan” of, in Bragan’s words, “moving forward cautiously without too much optimism.” In the long term, McKenna predicted that the town “may entertain a Proposition 2½ override in fiscal 2012 to restore some of what we have lost, particularly this year.”
Editor’s note: This article has been corrected and updated. The original article stated that the town’s proposed fiscal 2010 omnibus budget was $21.4 million. In fact, the figure was $19.7 million. The total town budget, which includes the omnibus, warrant articles, overlays, and offsets, adds up to $21.4 million.
