by John Osborn ·
Friday, September 27, 2024
As residents prepared to gather for the second session of 2024 Annual Town Meeting this Saturday, budgeting for fiscal 2026 was already underway.
In a memo distributed last month, the Finance Committee asked the town’s department heads, boards, committees, and commissions to prepare level-service budgets for the coming fiscal year, which begins July 1, 2025.
A level-service budget is one that provides enough money to maintain services at the same level as the previous year, a task that has proven increasingly difficult given the strictures of Proposition 2½, which limits increases in the tax levy to 2½% per year plus an allowance for new construction.
With the cost of providing municipal services rising at nearly twice that rate, last year the town lacked the money to pay for a level-service budget. So residents voted to override Prop 2½ and raise an additional $423,902 to make up the difference.
It’s too early to know whether an override will be necessary this coming year, although a forecast prepared for the first session of Annual Town Meeting last May predicted the town will face a $1.1 million deficit in fiscal 2026.
It’s a picture that, like a Polaroid snapshot, will become clearer with time. Finance Director Jared Mullane will deliver an updated forecast next month. All fiscal 2026 budgets are due to the Finance Department by Nov. 1 and will be distributed to the Finance Committee members and the Select Board Nov. 6.
Department-by-department reviews will begin Nov. 11 and last until February, when FinCom will deliver its final recommendations to the Select Board.
Meanwhile, fearing the worst, the Select Board at its meeting last week asked that departments and boards explain in their budget narratives what they would do if they were required to limit their fiscal 2026 spending to the amount they were appropriated for fiscal 2025, the current year. Inevitably, such level-funded budgets require cuts in services.