Cheshire Using More Free Cash Than Expected to Balance Budget
CHESHIRE, Mass.— The town is facing a late budget shakeup and instead of using $100,000 in free cash to offset the tax rate, it will have to use $300,000.
Interim Town Administrator Mark Webber told the Selectmen on Tuesday that after further calculations, the town would need to use $300,000 from free cash to keep the budget under the levy limit instead of the programmed $100,000.
"We are damned if we do and damned if we don't," Selectman Jason Levesque said. "There is no good situation that can play out here."
Webber said the town has $535,000 available in free cash. The use of $300,000 would leave around $175,000. He suggested leaving $200,000 but felt, given the circumstance, they could drain the cash supply down to $175,000. He strongly advised against using any more free cash.
This much larger amount prompted him to hack and slash many of the planned free cash expenditures such as the purchase of a backhoe, Town Hall improvements, and an allocation to Adams Ambulance, among others.
Levesque was concerned about delaying town maintenance projects and Highway Department purchases that would throw the maintenance schedule even further out of step.
"The last two years' use of free cash would almost fund the Highway Department for a year," he said. "We can't keep doing that. It is an exorbitant amount of free cash. We won't be able to make this up in one year ... we are going back to being reactive instead of proactive."
He said he was thankful that the education budget did not increase this year but added that is a guarantee that it will increase in the coming years.
Chairwoman Michelle Francesconi said funds are needed to get the Town Hall building up to code -- it is without working emergency lighting and has a deteriorating fire escape. She said there is soffit repair work that needs to be done and that there is also water in the basement.
"It is a mess," she said. "We are in such dire straits with our public buildings."
Webber said Cheshire has relied on free cash to offset the tax rate for years.
"Cheshire has been at the limit for as long as I can remember. It is always a little bit under or right up to it," he said. "As far back as I can remember we have been using free cash. The only way to break the cycle is an override."
He said just last fiscal year the town used $376,000 to reduce the tax rate.
"That does not go away. It fixed it last year, but that is your base going forward," Webber said. "We did not make that up, and you will be close to that every year until something happens."
Webber said typically proposition 2 1/2 overrides are not used for the operational side of the budget, and it could be a hard sell at town meeting.
Francesconi, looking more broadly, said a $300,000 override still wouldn't be enough.
"There is not enough," she said. "Even if we had that $300,000 and could use it fully we could not accomplish what we need. $300,000 is not enough. That is the reality."
Francesconi said she was most concerned with the town's information technology infrastructure and said the town is both out of date and very vulnerable to cyber attacks. She said the town has been targeted in the past.
"I would feel remiss if we didn't address some of the tech issues we know are a problem," she said. "If we are struck by a $1 million ransomware attack I can't imagine going to the taxpayers. It would likely be more than that."
She had on hand an IT support proposal and felt comfortable that the town could initially move forward with only part of the plan to save costs. She said the town had to find nearly $71,000 to make this happen.
The Selectmen cut some of the added administrative assistant positions to make up $20,000. They cut the purchase of a new dishwasher for the Council on Aging. With the $20,000 already in the account, the town had $48,000 to put toward the upgrades.
They lessened the amount they planned to put in the two stabilization accounts, freeing up another $20,000.
The Selectmen still had to find another $3,000 and considered lowering the proposed Police and Fire Chief Salary increases to make up the difference. Francesconi did leave the room during this conversation because she is married to the fire chief.
Board members also discussed pulling more from free cash but ultimately decided on taking funds from the Fire Department utility line item that had some available funds.
"You can grab a little here and there but it peanuts," Webber said. "There is no fat in there."
Looking toward the future, the Selectmen noted that they dramatically had to change the budget. Webber said the town could cut deeper into the budget but noted there wasn't much left to cut.
Francesconi said she knew the salary increase for a full-time town administrator would be controversial at town meeting and perhaps a place residents would want to cut.
The entire board agreed it did not want to cut into this $40,000 increase. The salary was already advertised, and members all felt they needed a full-time administrator to chase after critical grant funds.
"How much money have we lost out on over the years," Levesque said. "And how many more grants will we lose out on. The town administrator would be making money."
The idea of an override kept coming up, and Levesque said he thought it was something that the town had to begin planning for.
"We need to plan on asking for an override next year," he said. "It is going to get ugly if we don't. It is already ugly but is just going to get worse."
In other business, the Selectmen met with Superintendent Aaron Dean, who plans to use the library space in the Cheshire School as the district's technology office.
"They support a lot of our work so it makes sense to have them there," Dean said.
This would increase the school district's lease by $2,500. The Selectmen have yet to vote on a new agreement with the Hoosac Valley Regional School District.
There are two open Planning Board seats and the Selectmen asked that anyone interested contact Town Hall. The positions were not filled during the town election.
The Memorial Day Parade will terminate at Town Hall, not the West Mountain Road Cemetery this year.
Tags: cheshire_budget, fiscal 2022,
