By Scott MacKeen
Staff Writer
12/3/09
Hoping to make a recommendation for further budget cuts, but unsure how the fiscal year will play out, officials are divided on a strategy as they approach a February Special Town Meeting. Last week, the Warrant Committee held the view that the town can best anticipate being handed roughly the same $900,000 bill in state-aid cuts as it did last year, and should plan accordingly, through a combination of cuts and spending hold-backs. However, due in part to the fact it is an election year and it may be politically unsound for state officials to endorse deep budget cuts, Selectmen feel the remaining cuts in fiscal year 2010 won’t reach the same $900,000 for Milton as in fiscal year 2009.
The two views, which were batted around at a joint budgetary meeting Nov. 23, illustrate how officials are grappling with the difficult projections and uncertainties of the current economic climate. The meeting was attended both by Selectmen and the Warrant Committee, as well as the School Committee and town administrator.
The consensus then among town officials was that no guess as to how, when or if the state will cut additional local funds should be discounted.
“Nobody really knows. We threw that $900,000 number out there because we thought it was a good number. That’s what we got cut last year. We thought it was a good place to start,” Warrant Committee Chairman Tom Hurley said.
Officials said they likely won’t know until February or March how the rest of the fiscal year will shape out. What’s for certain, town officials already know what one cut will be. Several weeks ago, Gov. Deval Patrick announced millions more in cuts to local aid, of which just over $240,000 was apportioned to Milton. The question last week for town officials was how much more they can expect to be cut if another round of state reductions is handed down.
The $900,000 figure, which the Warrant Committee has used as a baseline for potentially recommending a town-wide spending holdback, reflects that current $240,000 reduction – which they recommend cutting at the Feb. 22 Special Town Meeting – and a $660,000 hold-back that would take care of future cuts in the fiscal year.
However, Selectmen were less dire in their projection. Selectmen Chairman John Shields said he spoke with State Rep. Walter Timilty and other state officials who feel the governor’s most recent reduction may be the last in the fiscal year.
“There has been no indication that the cut from the state would be $900,000,” Shields said. “We’re taking this $240,000 now. Do we think we’re going to get another $660,000 [in cuts]? I don’t think so.”
Selectmen introduced a plan to recommend a straight $500,000 cut to February Town Meeting – covering the initial $240,000 that must be made up and a potential second cut of a similar amount in the FY 10 budget.
“The $500,000 would anticipate another $260,000 cut. I think that’s reasonable,” Shields said.
Selectman Kathy Fagan said the plan also leaves the town free cash reserves for the next fiscal year if another cut isn’t made in the current one. Several officials have actually pointed to Fiscal Year 2011 as being the rougher one.
There were arguments as to whether the Warrant Committee’s spending holdback plan would impact town services similar to an actual cut. Shields said it would.
Hurley said no one is “advocating a $900,000 cut to department budgets.”
But Shields said the effect of the hold back in terms of services is the same.
“If you tell [departments] to hold back $900,000, of course there’s going to be service cuts,” he said.
He said Selectmen’s plan to cut $500,000 in February – rather than holdback the $900,000 throughout the remainder of FY 10 – impacts departments less. He said if department heads know ahead of time what the cut will be they can better prepare for it. He said doing it the other way would place too much burden on services the town provides.
“At some point, we have to be in the business of providing the kind of services we promised,”Shields said.
On the other hand, there were worries that the Selectmen’s plan doesn’t cover the town enough, and would leave departments scrambling to make up shortfalls late in the budget year if state cuts are larger than anticipated. Warrant Committee member Maurice Mitchell said the Selectmen’s proposal contains “hypothetic cuts” while he favors “conservative hold backs” through the Warrant Committee’s plan to get through the fiscal year.
“We were in this position at this same time last year. We didn’t think we were going to get cut by $900,000, but we did,” Warrant Committee member Ewan Innes added. Innes suggested Selectmen at least consider recommending a slightly higher number. He recommended $600,000.
Committee member Barbara Martin said officials should be “taking the safe approach,” guessing on a higher cut rather than the lower one.
“If we guess wrong, where is that money going to come from?” she said.
In a subsequent e-mail to the Times, Hurley wrote, “We have received reports from Sen. [Brian] Joyce indicating that FY10 will be a very difficult year but he is not able to give us any estimate of what [state-aid] cuts may be coming down the road. The other problem in estimating is that there are so many options that the governor has in terms of which budget line items to cut it gets difficult to predict how much might be local aid amounts even if you could predict the total amount of the state’s FY10 budget deficit.
“The only other information that we have is hearsay information that I got at the Massachusetts Association of Town Finance Committee’s annual meeting in October. There were people at that meeting throwing out the possibility of 10 percent local aid cuts. A 10 percent local aid cut would be about $900,000 for Milton.”
No vote was taken at the meeting. Selectmen plan to open and close the February Town Meeting warrant at their Dec. 3 meeting. It is likely to include an article to cut department budgets but as of last week it remained unclear what the recommendation would be.