Town officials have a "cautious optimism" about the budget for the next fiscal year, asking departments, boards, and committees to prepare level service budget requests rather than the completely level-funded budgets asked for in the past few years.
Finance Committee Chair Bob Thurston kicked off the budgeting season last Wednesday, Sept. 21, at an "all-boards" meeting with a memorandum outlining the budget request submission process for the 2013 fiscal year.
The memo, from the Finance Committee, town administrator, and finance director, said: "While we are still faced with potential issues ('double dip recession' or further collapse of the housing market and continued hike in the unemployment rolls) that may negatively affect our financial bottom line, there are some prospects (regionalization efforts and state revenue numbers and plans to increase state revenues) that provide us with cautious optimism. We will keep a close eye on all of the variables but will proceed cautiously forward."
While a level-funded budget would require cutting from services to make up for yearly increases in uncontrolled costs like salaries and health insurance, a level service budget allows departments and boards to fund their services the same as this year, while increasing their spending on uncontrollable costs, or "natural increases," as Thurston said last Wednesday.
The memo also asks departments and boards to name their top three budgetary needs that can't be addressed within the level service budget.
"This does not guarantee that we will be able to address all of the budgetary needs, but it will give us a better picture of what our additional operational needs are," the memo says.
Thurston warned last Wednesday that "things can turn around between now and Town Meeting.
"We need to know, if we did have to cut you some percent, what would we lose and what would be the impact of that," he said.
According to the schedule prepared by the Finance Committee, budget documents will be sent on Oct. 6 to boards and departments. Budget requests will be due back by Nov. 1 and the Finance Committee will outline the requests it received at a Nov. 16 "tri-board" meeting. After that, the Finance Committee will hold twice-monthly budget meetings with boards and departments until Town Meeting on April 28, 2012.
Last Wednesday's budget kick off came following a "strategic planning update and input session" from Town Administrator Tim Bragan.
Selectmen in June had asked each board, committee, commission, and department to prepare a five-year plan outlining goals and initiatives and the capital and spending requirements to make them possible. Bragan presented an overview of those plans last Wednesday. In the 20 years he's been a town administrator, Bragan said, every community he's seen go through strategic planning has found it to be "a beneficial process in the long run."
"Now we're looking at what all of you are thinking of in regards to your plans," Bragan said, "…how they interact and come together and how to make that happen."
Bragan highlighted four areas in the plans: "ideas and activities," "inter-operational/inter-dependence," "personnel proliferation," and "capital investment."
Among other things, the plans call for 11 town positions to be added, increased in hours, or changed in scope, Bragan said.
"Those were part and parcel of the needs for those departments as they see it," Bragan said.
Bragan also discussed the possibility of collaboration between certain town departments, for example, the schools and Parks and Recreation department, the fire department and ambulance squad, and the historical and cemetery commissions.
Bragan noted that, while there might be disagreements between some of those groups, now that their goals are identified in writing, "those points of friction are areas we need to be working on."