ATHOL — Athol voters at the June 13 annual town meeting will consider, among other things, a proposed FY23 municipal operating budget of nearly $22.8 million. That figure represents an increase of about 4.3 percent over the current year’s budget of just over $21.8 million. The total includes about $5.5 million for the town’s share of the Athol Royalston Regional School District Budget.
“All in all — and I mean this from the municipal perspective,” Town Manger Shaun Suhoski told the Athol Daily News, “we remain fiscally sound. The town is a very stable position, financially, as opposed to five, six, seven years ago.”
Suhoski said the proposed spending package would add staff to the Police Department and to the Department of Planning and Development.
“Twelve years after the Finance Committee undertook a very detailed study on staffing,” he explained, “this budget would finally get us to that position of 20 sworn officers. It would add a patrol officer about half-way through the fiscal year.
“It would also add a new part-time position in the Planning Department to assist our director of planning and development. Although grants are a big part of it, the time required to write a grant is 10 percent of the time required to administer a grant. And when you’re successful, it can breed an unbearable workload as you go forward with the various projects.”
Suhoski laid much of the success in landing grants at the feet of Planning and Development Director Eric Smith.
“Eric has been so good in his role supporting the Planning Board and getting grants,” he said, “we’re just so busy, we’re looking to supplement that with a part-time land use planner/grants administrator position.”
Those positions, the town manager explained, add about $80,000 to the budget. However, he added, the biggest challenge he faced in cobbling together an FY23 budget was not staffing, but retirements.
“The biggest challenge was and will be,” he continued, “be that, every now and then, you have a year where folks retire — and you can get a grouping of those people all at one time. A lot of the collective bargaining agreements have provisions for folks that retire; they can buy back a portion of sick leave that they haven’t used. That’s a recognized but unforeseen liability because at any given time you don’t know, nor can you really demand to know, when people want to retire. That’s up to them.
“You do know that as people do elect to retire, if they’ve been here a long time, especially, and did not abuse sick leave, there’s going to be a retirement cost that goes with that. This year we have six, maybe seven, indications of retirement, including several long-term employees. And that created over a quarter-million dollars in one-time expense for this cohort who are leaving public service.”
Finding $250,000 in a town budget of $17.2 million, Suhoski added, is a lot to account for, particularly in light of the fact the town has signed five collective bargaining agreements that kick in as of July 1, all of which include pay increases.
“When you have that kind of recognized but unforeseen expense, and it’s $250-grand, it really had the whole finance team kind of scrambling.”
Still, according to Suhoski, the finance team came up with what he called “innovative and appropriate for a one-time expense.
“We were able, with a non-union employee to have an agreement to utilize existing fiscal year funds that were available — budgeted and available — for retirements to handle that employee. That reduced that liability.
“Then the assessors took a hard look at their overlay reserve and — after potential appellate tax board cases are either resolved or the statute of appeal lapses — the assessors can release that portion of money held back in case were to lose an abatement appeal, for example. That overlay was released this year — I believe $150,000 — and that’s what really made up the difference in those retirements.”
The bottom line, said Suhoski: “We’re in good shape.”
“What we’re proposing is within recurring revenue and we were able to get our way through this ‘blip’ with that one budget issue this year.”
The town manger said the town has continued to build it financial reserves, allowing the Capital Planning Program Committee to use over $1 million in free cash to cover one-time capital expenses.
Suhoski pointed out that the bulk of federal funding provided under the American Rescue Plan — some $3.5 million — was targeted solely for one-time expenses.
“I think the Selectboard and Finance Committee, and our finance staff, were very careful that we wanted ARPA funds to go to one-time projects, not toward recurring operational expenses,” he said. “That’s a trap you can get caught in and it just cascades and becomes something you can’t overcome. You have to back-fill and try to move forward at the same time.”
Finally, Suhoski pointed out that he and the finance team tried to be careful in projecting the revenue that will be used to pay for budget.
“We try to err on the side of being a bit conservative in estimating local receipts or meals and excise taxes, things of that nature — kind of miscellaneous,” he concluded. “We may program 75 percent — maybe 80 percent — of what our real expectation is on that. So, if there’s a dip in the economy we have a little buffer, a little wiggle room, before we have to take more drastic measures.”
Athol’s Annual Town Meeting is scheduled for 7 p.m. on Monday, June 13 at Town Hall.
Greg Vine can be reached at gvineadn@gmail.com