My Two Cents

By the time you read this we are likely about a week from Town Meeting. Town Meeting is scheduled for May 11th 7pm at the Dighton Rehoboth Regional School. As you all probably know, the board of selectman have spent the past few months working on the budget. Once the selectman finalize the budget it is sent to the Finance Committee who will determine the source of funding. As we expected, we were short 1.2 Million in our operating budget based on the request from other elected officials, department heads and school assessment. The requested town budget was 8.1Million, an increase from last year around 500,000. Last year the town took a serious reduction after the failed 2 ½ override. The school requested increase for the operating budget was approx. 450,000 from last year. Last year they had an increase of 1.7Million. The total Dighton Rehoboth for fiscal 2016 is 38Million.

The finance committee made a recommendation to fund the shortfall by taking 400,000 of free cash available, the town reducing the budget by 400,000 and the school reducing their assessment by 400,000. The town reduced the budget from 8.1million to 7.7million. The school committee will meet to hear recommendation from the superintendent on where to reduce. I would hope the school committee would support the recommendation of the superintendent…but they did not.
The board of selectman met with some members of the school committee and the superintendent to discuss our shortfall and what the finance committee was recommending. Using one time monies is never recommended for the obvious reason….you are not guaranteed to have these funds available the following year. While as it stands now the budget is “balanced”, we are far from having an operating budget that we can live within our projected revenue stream. We were very lucky to have a higher than expected free cash balance due to some one time monies as well as excise revenue being higher than anticipated. The finance committee adjusted some of our estimates for local fees for this coming year based on some historical figures. Some have argued that we were too conservative in our revenue in past years. I would argue that we followed the guidelines of the state. It just so happens that Rehoboth is not the “norm” and we experienced higher excise revenue. Our free cash should be used for one time expenditures, like capital items. So, using one time 400,000 of free cash only means we will likely be short 400,000 next year, in addition to any E&D that was used to “balance” the school budget.

The selectman did some restructuring of the police department…we promoted and appointed the police chief and do not plan on filling the lieutenant position. We are also not filling the School Resource Officer. We are not hiring any additional highway personnel. Two part time positions at the COA may be eliminated if we do not get a “formula grant” to fund these wages. In the past, they have been funded thru this grant but in order to be sure they were stayed, we budgeted the wages…just in case. We don’t have any room for just in case. We had some reductions in our original estimate for insurance. We do not have any increases budgeted for any of the five unions within the budget. We got the budget down 400,000….not any where near an ideal budget.

The school started their budget process about the same time as the town. The superintendent asked his department heads to prepare a budget that they “needed” ….not wanted, what they needed. They came back with 1.4Million over last years budget. In two years, the budget proposed budget increased 3.1Million (1.7M last year and 1.4Million this year). Staggering! The superintendent proposed some reductions to that proposed budget and in the end the settled on a 450,000 increase from last years increase of 1.7M. I need to remind everyone that even if a 2 ½ override had passed, we would have been looking at another override…and we would continue to look for one every single year.

The town’s recurring revenue, property taxes is at 19M. The School budget is 38Million. It will never work. There has to be a major restructuring within the school. Why is it that the budget has continued to grow a double digit increases yet enrollment is down double digits? While I agree that unfunded mandates make it difficult for both schools and towns budget when there is a cap on what you can raise, with no cap on what you are required to spend, that is not the entire reason…nor the majority of the reason.

When we met with some school committee members along with the superintendent and finance committee, one school committee member stated to reduce their 38,000,000 by 700k (Rehoboth share is about 70%) would “devast” the schools. Are you kidding me? Seriously!?! There are many lines in the budget with 0 dollars expended in fiscal 2014 and nothing spent in fiscal 2015, yet we are budgeting dollars in those lines….to the tune of 700,000. Why? Don’t tell me that it has to do with unforeseen costs…if you haven’t seen it in two years, don’t budget for it. The school committee has a budget of 142,000. Must be nice. That is more than most department budgets in Rehoboth! The school E& D…which is similar to our free cash started at 1.9M. Similar to our free cash it’s the difference between the estimated expenses and estimated revenue. It rose this past year….no kidding…if you budget for over 700,000 and don’t use it, it is “turned” back and goes into the E&D account. The school committee has expended around 300,000. So the school has available 1.6M. I am not an advocate of using one time monies, like E&D or free cash to fund our operational budget. They both should be used to fund one time expenses….buy back of sick time per a contract, litigation or capital item…items that are not recurring year after year. Meaning if you don’t have the free cash or E&D available next year, you don’t fund those items. Like the town, the largest portion of the budget is labor. It stands to reason that if enrollment is significantly down and the budget has significantly increased and a major part of the budget is labor that we have underutilized labor. Meaning we are not maximizing our labor. It makes no sense the school committee voted for school choice…meaning they will allow outside the district students to choose to come to the district to fill classes that have unfilled seats. Instead of school choice, why are we not consolidating classes? We would have significant savings and more in line to our revenue stream by reducing labor than bringing in students. No one wants to lay anyone off. It stinks to lose your job. It stinks when it someone you know. The school committee’s budget doesn’t work. I say School committee because they are the ones that vote and accept the recommendation of the superintendent. It’s not his budget its yours….own it. The town’s budget is the Board of Selectman, we vote on it , we own it.

This year the town had a healthy free cash balance due to one time monies coming back and higher local receipts than expected. We have adjusted our estimates as I mentioned earlier. We are not anticipating any one time monies coming to us….other than some reimbursement on the blizzard…not a lot of money but something. We have two fire vehicles …one out of commission and one on its last leg. If we use free cash to pay for the replacement vehicles we save the town over 200,000 vs leasing them. I need to remind everyone that adding a lease to a budget we can’t afford only results in more cuts in the next fiscal year. I have no idea where we would cut. Did you try calling the highway dept this year and get no answer and no call back? Have you tried getting a gun license? The police force is down around 20% which will result in not only increase overtime but also burning out our officers. You can only work 14 hour shifts for so long before it starts to affect you. The other alternative is to change the number of officers on a shift. My opinion, in a town like Rehoboth…house set back…48 square miles, the best detirent to crime is police presence. We have trimmed down the budget…its 100,000 over last years budget, where we cut way too deep, in my opinion. Some unions have brought in their union lawyers in our negotiation, basically claiming we are not negotiation with them. It’s hard to negotiate a contract when you have nothing to negotiate with....they are done with taking zero. We are not able to add more highway personnel nor a part time clerical person to highway. By using free cash to balance the budget, we are only giving us some time to restructure the town’s budget. The school committee needs to understand they need to do the same. My recommendation would have been that the school take 70% of the shortfall and the town 30% since that is the approximate % of the budget. Seems fair to me. If we can cut 400,000 out of a 8.1M budget, the schools can ABSOLUTELY cut 700,000 (1.8%) out of a 38 Million budget, without affecting the quality of the education at all.

I’m asking that you support the recommendation of the finance committee. This will give both the schools and the town time to restructure the budget for next fiscal year. The town can’t cut anymore and to put off purchase of much needed capital will only put us in a worse situation next year…when we have no excess money to not only buy capital but to bridge any budget deficit…and we will have a deficit next year. I probably gave you a little more than two cents this month!