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Date: 3/15/2018
LONGMEADOW – On March 12 the Longmeadow Select Board hosted a special meeting, which consisted of a Budget Forum to discuss the FY19 budget review.
Town Manager Stephen Crane presented the budget to the group in attendance, and thanked the numerous department heads that joined the meeting for their work on the budget and for managing their departments efficiently. He then explained that he thinks one of the highlights for this year’s budget is that they were able to accomplish the goal to increase property taxes by only 2.3 percent as opposed to increasing the taxes a full 2.5 percent.
“To get to the 2.3 percent we have recommended modifications to both the capital and OPEB [other post employment benefits] policies, and the recommendations were contemplated even before we really started nailing down budget numbers,” Crane said
Crane also expressed that this year there was a 10 percent increase in the governor’s recommended state aid numbers.
“We carry the governor’s numbers as our budget assumption every year, the fact that they are much higher than past years is a positive thing. We did have some concern that maybe we were being a little optimistic but we decided to continue with the set of assumptions that we always use.
Crane shared a pie chart of the town’s budget in a summary that showed the FY19 operating budget by function is approximately $69,104,496. The chart shows that the public schools take up 53 percent of said funds, coming in at $36,890,905. The employee benefits and liability insurance general fund will take 14 percent of the budget at $9,581,200. Public Works will also take 14 percent of funding at $9,357,022. Exactly $5,308,646 or eight percent of FY19 funding was allocated to public safety. General fund debt service will receive $4,452,192 or six percent of the budget. Approximately $1,710,264 or three percent of FY19 funding will go to community services. The town’s general government will receive $1,610,190, which comes to two percent of the funding. Lastly, planning and community development was allocated $194,077, which is less than one percent of funds.
During the slideshow Crane provided a slide that shows the town the available fund balances, those balances include: free cash at $572,472, operational stabilization fund at $3,299,249, capital stabilization fund at $25,254, water retained earnings at $505,827, sewer retained earnings at $902,985, sold waste and recycling retained earnings at $42,734 and ambulance reserve at $41,128. Crane explained that he believes the town is in a “favorable” position.
“I would call it a, relatively speaking, no drama budget. This 2.3 percent increase, the information we’re presenting here does fully fund the school department’s requests. It doesn’t go smoothly ever year but we think this was a year that things came together pretty nicely,” Crane expressed.
To watch the Budget Forum for yourself and to listen to individual department heads discuss the budget on their own levels, go to LCTV’s live stream video at https://livestream.com/longmeadow/events/8108095.