Town officials haggling over fiscal ’03 budget
Published on April 17th, 2002
STONEHAM, MA – As the May 6 Town Meeting approaches, Selectmen and the Finance Board have yet to agree on the town budget.
Selectmen made no decisions at their April 9 meeting. Outstanding department budgets include the School, Police and Fire Departments and the rink.
“We were not ready to vote,” said Selectmen Chairman Tony Kennedy. “The consensus of the Board was to wait until April 23.”
The Finance and Advisory Board is scrambling to find money for teachers, firefighters and a police clerk.
Finance Board Chairman Richard Gregorio said he plans to go to press with the Finance Board’s booklet of recommended expenditures on April 22. This booklet, which is distributed at the Annual Town Meeting, explains to citizens how the Town proposes to balance the fiscal 2003 budget.
At the April 9 Selectmen’s meeting, the Board suggested including Town Administrator David Berry’s budget figures in the budget booklet. But on April 11 Gregorio said the booklet will contain the Finance Board’s recommendations as it always has.
“We are having an emergency meeting of both boards on Tuesday night,” Gregorio said. (The Tuesday, April 16, meeting was posted on Friday, April 12.)
Gregorio said the Finance Board knows what it wants to spend but must figure out the best sources of funding. At the Finance Board’s April 11 meeting, members voted to give the School Department $200,000 more than the TA recommended but $100,000 less than the Superintendent asked for on April 9. The Finance Board also voted to shift $82,000 from Fire Department overtime to personnel to fund two more firefighters with zero impact on the overall department budget.
“If there’s a problem with overtime, we’ll address that at the fall Town Meeting,” Greg-orio said.
And the Board agreed with the TA that a part time staffer at the rink shouldn’t be made full-time.
Members are researching where to get the money for the Police and School Departments, Gregorio said.
Surplus funds from the fiscal 2002 School Department budget, surplus funds from other line items of the town budget and greater than anticipated returns on investment income may provide the necessary funds. But it is hard to rely on a set amount of free cash, or funds left over from specific line items, before the Town knows how much money is needed to reconcile the actual fiscal 2002 deficit.
Berry said he and Town Accountant Ron Florino will finalize this number — which will still include estimates of state aid — on April 16.
Withholding annual deposits into the Reserve Fund and the Capital Fund could also free up some cash, but paying for ongoing expenses out of these funds set up to cover one-time project or emergency costs is poor fiscal policy.
And even the TA’s conservative numbers assume level funding from the State. Governor Swift’s budget proposed level funding on Jan. 25, but House Speaker Tom Finneran (D-Mattapan) has said Swift miscalculated. According to Finneran’s calculations, Swift’s budget would require cutting as much as $310,000 from state aid to Stoneham. On the other hand, if Finneran’s proposed tax increases pass, Stoneham could see more aid than last year.
“In an election year it’s hard to tell what’s going to happen,” Gregorio said. “If we get less, we have to cut costs and maybe look at the Stabilization Fund, but I don’t want to take much more from there ($600,000 of $1.2 million is budgeted.”
But Kennedy said he wants to find more money to offset the dip into Fire Department overtime and to give the schools $300,000 to prevent teacher layoffs.
“If the man running the show (Superintendent Joseph Con-nelly) says he needs $300,000, we should try to get him the money,” Kennedy said.
Selectmen, the Finance Board, Berry and Florino met Tuesday night, to work out their differences. Details next week.
Under the Town Administra-tor Act, the Selectmen should have delivered the TA’s balanced budget with recommendations to the Finance Board by March 12.
“We’ll have to vote on the budget sooner or later,” Kennedy said last Friday. Townspeople will get the chance at the May 6 Town Meeting.
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