This has been a scenario developing for several years. The use of one-time funds has provided a 'band-aid' to get by. Each time the 'band-aid' is applied folks generally forget that it digs us deeper into the hole for next year. Both School Committee and Town Council have used these 'fiscal' measures.
The School Committee deviated from their revolving fund policy to use funds from the various revolving funds (Transportation, Sports fees, etc. ) to balance their budget.
The Town Council tapped into the Budget Stabilization account for FY 2019 and FY 2020 to balance the overall town budget. There is only $6,000 left (if I recall) so that doesn't help this time around.
School Committee - school budgets
- FY 2021 - Page 12 touts a decrease in use of revolving funds
- FY 2020 - look for the 'red' marked offsets, i.e. revolving funds used in this doc
- FY 2019 - Page 11 summaries the use of 'revolving funds' for
Town Council - town budget
- FY 2021 - "The Budget Stabilization Fund is completely empty as the remaining amount was used to balance the FY20 budget. The Town does not have one time reserves to build into this budget or bail us out. There is no “Rainy Day” money."
Page 4 of the budget narrative
https://www.franklinma.gov/sites/g/files/vyhlif591/f/uploads/2020-05-27_fy_2021_budget_message_narrative_final.pdf
- FY 2020 - "The FY 20 proposed budget will be balanced with use of approximately $390,000 from our Budget Stabilization Fund (Rainy Day account), which will bring the balance of that account to zero. Further, both the School Department and the Town will cut budgets to make ends meet While this will work for one year the FY 21 budget will require policy decisions on how to handle the budget shortfall. The fiscal forecast suggest a shortfall of approximately $4,000,000 +/-"
https://www.franklinma.gov/sites/g/files/vyhlif591/f/uploads/2020-05-27_fy_2021_budget_message_narrative_final.pdf
- FY 2019 - "While fiscal challenges remain, our resolve to overcome them is relentless. The FY 19 proposed budget will be balanced with use of approximately $1,500,000 from our Budget Stabilization Fund (Rainy Day account). While this will work for one year the FY 20 budget will require policy decisions on how to handle the budget shortfall."
https://www.franklinma.gov/sites/g/files/vyhlif591/f/uploads/2020-05-27_fy_2021_budget_message_narrative_final.pdf
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| How did we get here? |
The budget narrative was taken down off of the town site. Do you have a copy?
ReplyDeletenot taken down, they updated it and changed the link... I went through to fix the links, they should all be good now. BTW - there are multiple places where I shared that doc over the past couple of weeks, including an audio version of it.
DeleteThanks Steve. You are on top of it as usual. Appreciate the help.
ReplyDelete