The Rochester Select Board and the Finance Committee met Monday to discuss ways to address a problematic town budget proposal for FY27.
Town Administrator Cameron Durant started with a slideshow presentation, laying out the facts. The proposed budget for the next fiscal year is $27,900,000, but the town is facing $29,200,000 in department requests at the same time it projects revenues for FY27 to be only $900,000 higher than in FY26, which saw a $27,200,000 budget.
This means the town is facing a “structural imbalance” gap of $1,400,000, Durant said. “This is not a town mistake,” he said. “There is a structural budget imbalance across the commonwealth.”
Budget cuts that are already being proposed leave officials with $134,000 remaining to further ax to get to balanced spending for FY27, he said. The town-side cuts include $606,661 trimmed from staffing and variety of departments. The Rochester Memorial School budget is eliminating four staff positions.
But the town has to pay $240,000 in out-of-district placement tuition budget for Special Education students living in Rochester, he said, and $716,000 for the Old Rochester Regional School District health-insurance debt.
The town has to decide where these additional cuts will come from, Durant said as he laid out the main sticking points and cautions. The town has $2,100,000 in its “free cash” account, but there are already large commitments to spend those funds for FY27, he noted. He cautioned against using more free cash too freely. “Using one-time (free cash) funds cannot solve a structural problem,” he said. “The issue is generating new revenue and living within our means. The art is how do make it work for our budget needs?”
Rochester resident and retired school superintendent Dr. Kristine Nash cautioned the state circuit-breaker reimbursement program for special education costs does not guarantee how much money the town will get from the state, as the formula only reimburses “up to” 75% of transportation, which does not apply to residential out-of-district placements.
Durant’s main suggestion of the night was that the town allocate all of the free cash into specific uses, or “buckets,” so the fund will be used only for specific future spending. Finance Committee member David Arancio’s main message of the night was, “we focus our energies on what would work best for the town, not just the budget line by line.”
No decisions came out of this joint meeting before the Finance Committee moved to review department budgets, but Durant promised a more refined budget proposal for the April 6 Select Board meeting. The FY27 budget will be voted on by residents at the Annual Town Meeting on May 18.
The next meeting of the Rochester Select Board was not scheduled at adjournment.
Rochester Select Board
By Michael J. DeCicco