Advisory and Selectmen to hash out Budget differences Tuesday

Above: Last week, Advisory went through figures from the 2% version of the budget approved by Selectmen. This Tuesday night, they’ll try to find common ground with selectmen on the areas where they disagree. (image cropped from SAM video, click to enlarge)

A week from Saturday, Southborough Annual Town Meeting voters will be asked to decide on the Town’s budget for July 2020 through June 2021. Town officials still aren’t in agreement on what that budget should be. That may change tomorrow, when the Advisory Committee and Board of Selectmen “meet”*.

The final compromise budget is likely to represent a less than 2% tax increase for average Southborough households. But while selectmen recently approved a 0.85% or less increase, last week the majority of Advisory members disagreed with some decisions behind the lower figure.

Members of both the BOS and Advisory are especially motivated to try to find a consensus position in advance of Town Meeting this year. Trying to avoid a budget battle on Town Meeting floor is always a goal of the two groups. This year, both have pointed to concerns about Covid-19 and vulnerable voter populations as an additional reason to be on the same page. Still, that may be a challenge given some officials’ stances leading into Tuesday’s joint meeting.

The disparity between boards comes down to two main issues: 1) selectmen’s cautious handling of new hire requests; 2) a budget cutting exercise that some Advisory members have characterized as arbitrary. 

2021 New Hires

After much debate, selectmen voted 3-2 to freeze all new hires in the new fiscal year to January 1st. The rationale was to avoid having to lay off new hires if the Town’s finances are in worse condition that projected. The majority of selectmen also rejected a request to upgrade IT’s new hire request from part-time to full time.

Advisory voted to support hiring a full time position for IT and to start all four new hires on July 1st. The other new hires are a full time administrative support person for Youth & Family Services and two police officers.

It wasn’t clear last week what impact either board’s decisions would have on the projected tax rate increases.

2% Budget Exercise

In April, selectmen asked the Town Finance Team to show them versions of the budget capped at a 0% tax increase and a 2% increase. For the 2% version, departments and committees (with a few exceptions) were asked to cut their most recent budget requests for FY21 by 2%. Selectmen voted last Tuesday to support the “2% version” of the budget.

Last week, Advisory member John Rooney argued to fellow board members that the exercise undermined the budgeting process. He said that departments had been asked that winter to bring Advisory their “very sharpened pencil budget”, they complied and budgets were voted on. Now they were asked to cut from those budgets. He asserted it would impact Town services. He furthered that the savings per individual taxpayer would be too small to be worth it. 

Going through the cuts approved by selectmen, Advisory did find that some of the cuts made sense and were even supported by Department heads.

Advisory Chair Kathy Cook posited that when the cuts made by departments exceeded 2% it showed that they likely didn’t think they need the money. Where the budgets were exactly 2% she presumed that they didn’t have extra to cut. In practice, they appeared to decide there were a few exceptions to those rules.

While they didn’t take their official vote last week, members voiced their positions, indicating a 4-2 split. The majority opposed making cuts through the “arbitrary” exercises. Instead they rejected the “2% cuts” as a whole, but supported adding back in some of the cuts. The net result was adding close to $140,000 back to the FY21 budget. 

Members differentiated the cuts they supported as money that believe shouldn’t have been in the budget in the first place. the biggest of those was an $8,000 reduction from the Economic Development Committee from a budget that Advisory opined earlier in the budget season was too large.

Dissenting members Chelsea Malinowski and Andrew Dennington disagreed on some of the items the others wanted to “add back”. They opined that making cuts was important given the economic climate and sacrifices that others were making. Malinowski also pushed that the over $60,000 Advisory wanted to add back to Police and Fire budgets were cuts the chiefs told her were manageable. And she stressed that given the amount of money (and jobs) that the school cut from their budgets, the Town should be doing the same.

Cook and Malinowski plan to put together two versions of a budget for Advisory’s official vote. One will represent the overall rejection of the 2% exercise. The other will include additional budget cuts that Malinowski believes should be made.

This Tuesday, Advisory members will vote to take their official position on the budget. Following the vote, they will join the Board of Selectmen for a joint meeting to “resolve” differences.

Miscellaneous capital expense delays

In other decisions, Advisory supported putting off a few more capital expenses based on recommendations from the Capital Committee and the Superintendent of Northborough and Southborough Schools.

Cook said that Superintendent Greg Martineau clarified that the boiler for Finn School isn’t needed this year and should be fine for 5-7 years. That’s project would have required Southborough to borrow $85,000 with some of that payment coming in FY22.

The Capital Committee recommended pushing the $60,000 purchase of a new Fire Chief vehicle out another 2-3 years.

*As with all public board/committee meetings these days, they will meet up via zoom, not in person. Click here for the schedule and agendas for Tuesday night’s meetings.