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2009-AC rpt to TMTG
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2009-AC rpt to TMTG
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8/9/2023 8:13:02 PM
Creation date
1/17/2013 4:46:23 PM
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Archives
Year
2009
Department
Town Clerk
Keywords or Subject
Minutes - AC - Appropriation Committee
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APPROPRIATION COMMITTEE REPORT TO 2009 ATM—MARCH 2O09 <br /> FY2011 and beyond <br /> Continuation of the street reconstruction and resurfacing program at the FY2009 level will not meet the <br /> Town's long-term needs (and possibly even the short-term needs) for street and sidewalk maintenance and <br /> new sidewalk construction. Rather, the Town will need to approve a debt exclusion or override in order to <br /> keep up. Last year the DPW floated a preliminary figure of$15M to cover eight years of street maintenance <br /> work. Unfortunately, any plan to put approval of a debt exclusion to the voters has been put off because of <br /> the recession. <br /> That there will be substantial demands for capital investments in future fiscal years is amply demonstrated <br /> by the list of requests for FY2010 that were deferred and the lists of possible projects for FYs 2011-2014 <br /> that may be found on page XI-19 of the Brown Book. In the mean time the Town Manager is identifying <br /> capital projects that can be delayed so as to reduce the growth of debt service over the next few years. <br /> Clearly it will be important to carefully review the upcoming capital requests and to assign sensible <br /> priorities to each. <br /> Projections of expenses and revenues in the fiscal years following FY2010 are presented in the Appendix. <br /> They indicate that maintenance of the current level of services could cost some millions more than the <br /> revenues that will be available. We have not quantified the uncertainties in the growth of each of the major <br /> components of expenses and revenues. Indeed, the experiences of the past few years which all took place <br /> in less economically turbulent times showed that it is difficult to predict the size of a budget gap more than <br /> a year in advance with a precision of better than $lM or even $2M. In the current financial environment <br /> the uncertainty in the FY2011 projection is even greater. <br /> In our report to the 2008 Annual Town Meeting we wrote" ... future budgets can only be balanced through <br /> (1)passing operating overrides; (2) finding significant new sources of revenue, and/or (3) finding ways to <br /> deliver services at lower cost." Today the prospects for passing overrides look rather dim for at least a <br /> couple of years. Thus the Town will have no choice but to manage expenditures and to find new sources of <br /> revenue. The issues surrounding employee health insurance immediately come to mind when the topic of <br /> management of expenditures is raised. There are certainly prospects for slowing the growth of health <br /> insurance costs, but these largely depend on the outcome of negotiations between the Town and employee <br /> collective bargaining units. The possibility of collecting property tax on telephone equipment and the <br /> possibility of increases in the meals and hotel/motel taxes were noted above. Federal economic stimulus <br /> funding could be received and spent over FYs 2010 and 2011; however, such funds are unlikely to be <br /> converted to long-term revenue sources. Other than these possibilities, an expanded commercial tax base <br /> may well be the primary route to revenue growth over the next five to ten years; this should be kept in mind <br /> during discussion of the zoning articles. We hope that the projections in the Appendix and this discussion <br /> will promote a multi-year view as each of the financial articles is acted upon at this Town Meeting. <br /> Page 10 of 59 <br />
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