FY2025 Town Manager's Proposed Budget

February 21, 2024

Re:     Town Budget for FY2025

This letter accompanies the Manager’s Proposed Budget for FY2025 for the fiscal year that begins July 1, 2024.

This budget recognizes the prior-year financial condition of the Town as reported in the latest audited financial statements. Those documents show a General Fund balance of $8,397,708 on June 30, 2023 which includes an Unassigned General Fund balance of $5,792,236 plus $86,800 Non-spendable, $156,283 in Restricted, $1,642,817 in Committed Reserves, and $719,572 Assigned for subsequent year’s expenditures carried forward. For FY2025 we expect non-tax revenue to increase slightly over the previous year.

This budget proposes a total municipal spending of $17,363,979, a $1,293,282 increase over last year’s town meeting approved budget. The share of the expenditure committed to the property tax would be $6,749,415, an increase of $1,463,695 over last year’s town meeting approved budget.

This budget would propose a COLA of 4% and an additional market adjustment of 5% for those employees below the area median as recommended by the Personnel Committee.

The budget proposes several new staff, including public works and Fire/EMS. This reflects the recommendations of the Council’s Committee on Personnel. We expect increases in some of our insurance rates but the exact amounts are unknown at this time.  We expect the exact amount to be delivered to the town in April.

This budget includes proposed capital spending approved by the Council’s Capital Committee. These include pavement maintenance, a replacement of Engine 3, repairs to the roof and boiler room, one wheeler with plow, a 4wd loader, 4 International trucks, a moveable automated flagger, and road engineering.

This budget proposal will receive a Public Hearing in March followed by Council and Budget Committee review actions. The final document will reflect the policy choices of the Council and will be submitted to the voters at the annual Town Meeting in June.

           Sincerely,

           Tashia Pinkham, Town Manager