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Date: 3/15/2023
LONGMEADOW — At a joint meeting between the Longmeadow Select Board and the Finance Committee on March 6, Town Administrator Lyn Simmons presented a draft of the fiscal year 2024 (FY24) town budget.
The meeting began with an overview of the school department budget. Superintendent M. Martin O’Shea proposed a $41.94 million budget with $38.9 million from the town’s general fund and $3.04 million in special revenue such as grants and state aid. This is a $1.7 million increase over FY23. He acknowledged that 4.01 percent is a higher year-over-year increase than usual, with a yearly average of 2.21 percent over the past decade.
“We’re appreciative that the town supports us the way they do,” O’Shea said.
The superintendent explained that despite maintaining level services, inflationary pressures such as the cost of living, recent spikes in utility costs and a 14 percent hike in out-of-district (OOD) tuition prices for students whose special education needs cannot be met within the district. The rise in state-set tuition plus an expected growth in the number of students needing OOD placements accounts for an additional $682,718 of the budget increase.
Other factors in the budget increase include the shifting needs of students and staff well-being, the ongoing state budget-setting process, the town’s finances and the formula for Chapter 70 state aid distribution.
According to Gov. Maura Healey’s proposed FY24 budget, Longmeadow is expecting $7.09 million in Chapter 70 funding, up from $6.49 million in FY23 and $5.7 in FY22. This figure has been rising since the Student Opportunity Act (SOA) went into effect in FY22 and will continue to as the legislation continues to be phased in over the next three years. O’Shea said the SOA reflects “the true cost of educating children.” A municipality’s Chapter 70 distribution is impacted by the population of “high needs” students — English language learners, low-income students and special education students — in a district. In the 2014-15 school year, 23.4 percent of Longmeadow students were high needs. That figure has increased to 29.9 percent in the current school year.
Select Board member Thomas Lachiusa asked how the new middle school, for which the district is planning to conduct a feasibility study, will affect future budgets. O’Shea said that if a single new school is built, rather than the two existing middle schools, the district will save money in overhead.
Town budget
Simmons then moved on to the town’s operational budget. She reported that she and interim Finance Director Paul Pasterczyk were able to create a balanced budget without tapping into the town’s reserve accounts. The budget currently uses the full increase of 2.5 percent of over last year’s budget allowed under law, but Simmons said new growth, state aid and estimated receipts from accounts, such as water and sewer, should allow the final budget to meet the Finance Committee’s goal of limiting the increase to 2.44 percent over last year. She also noted that the budget will fund the FY24 capital planning budget and the DPW changes identified in the Collins Center study report.
Revenue from property taxes is up 3.31 percent to $62.25 million, while $8.53 million in state aid has “drastically helped” the budgeting process, Simmons said, adding that a total of $6.31 million in local receipts reflects a “promising” 14.2 percent increase over last year.
On the other side of the equation are the school budget, which is slated to be fully funded, $12.93 million for the DPW and $12.66 million in employee benefits and health insurance. The town’s debt service is more at $6.51 million — $300,000 over last year — partly due to the middle school feasibility study and the Longmeadow High School air handlers, for which the town bonded.
Other expenses include a tree warden/conservation agent position, extended hours at the Adult Community Center, and 50 percent of the town’s assessment for WestComm emergency dispatch. The state program under which the town regionalized dispatch paid for its assessment for the first three years. This year the town will pay half the assessment and next year it will be responsible for 75 percent of it, before taking on the whole amount.
A couple of items were reduced or removed from the budget. The general government portion of the budget came in 14 percent down compared to last year, at just over $2 million. Meanwhile, the legal line item had no funding attached to it as the money approved in last year’s budget was sufficient to cover the remaining costs associated with fighting Eversource’s Western Massachusetts Natural Gas Reliability Project.
Finance Committee Clerk Erica Weida commented on the town’s reserve accounts, which currently contain $2.93 million in free cash and $7.96 million in the stabilization account. She said that while healthy balances in reserve accounts benefit bond interest rates, the money could be used to fund maintenance. “There’s a real cost to holding onto cash,” she said.
Select Board Vice Chair Mark Gold asked if the town is fully funding other post-employment benefits (OPEB), such as health insurance, for new employees. Pasterczyk explained that a percentage of the yearly budget is dedicated to OPEB and has not been adjusted based on the number of people the town employs. He said that more research would have to be done into how to account for employee numbers in the yearly allocation. Lachiusa agreed with Gold and said it was a “fiscally responsible” adjustment to make.
Select Board Chair Josh Levine asked Simmons about future utility fluctuations. Simmons explained that the fuel costs were mostly “locked in.” Pasterczyk said the electricity supply price was also locked in, but the distribution rate fluctuates.
Weida brought up the idea of putting solar panels on the roofs of town-owned buildings. Efforts on that had already been undertaken by a working group, Simmons said, but “a significant amount” of unapplied credits from the existing net metering agreement were discovered.
The agreement must be reworked to account for the LED streetlights. Once the credits are applied to the town’s utility bills, the working group will again take up the option of solar installation.
The Select Board will vote on the proposed budget on March 20, and it will appear on the Annual Town Meeting warrant on May 9.