State Compels Williamstown to Submit Simplified Monthly Spending Plan
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Select Board on Monday afternoon approved a new dollar figure for the town's 1/12th budget spending plan after the state told the town to submit a higher amount.
Town Manager Jason Hoch went to the board asking it to approve a budget of $2,130,000 for the month of July, $777,000 more than the Select Board previously OK'd based on Hoch's projection of the town's actual expenses for next month.
The biggest change is that the new, higher figure, includes 1/12th of the local tax revenue that Williamstown paid in fiscal 2020 for the Mount Greylock Regional School District. Previously, Hoch had left it out of his projections for July (the first month of FY21) because the town pays its assessment to the district on a quarterly basis, and the first bill is not due until September.
"After we went through the exercise of approving the 1/12th budget at the beginning of the month, we subsequently learned that the Department of Revenue has a minimum 1/12th budget that they're looking for based on the total amount to be raised by taxes, not our operating budget," Hoch told the Select Board in a special Monday afternoon meeting. "That includes school payments, capital expenses and the like."
The net effect is no real change for taxpayers. About $766,000 in the new 1/12th budget would have been added into a September 1/12th budget had the town gone forward with the process Hoch implemented last month. That plan calculated a $1.3 million July budget that the Select Board and Finance Committee reviewed in late May.
"We don't expect to spend that [$766,000] this month," Hoch said. "This is basically an accounting exercise."
The downside of the news Hoch got last week from DOR is that last month's calculations were unnecessary.
"You can imagine the colorful phrases that [Town Accountant Anna Osborn] and I uttered and thought of the hours we put into it to have an accurate [July] number," Hoch said. "It was the subject of conversation on the Berkshire managers' listserv last week."
That said, Hoch said the work he and Osborn did last month was not completely wasted.
"It was a good exercise for us," he said. "Because I did it with an eye on thinking through first pass on potential budget adjustments for the revised fiscal year. It wasn't all lost. But there was a certain level of analysis that would not have been necessary."
In answer to a question from Select Board member Andy Hogeland, Hoch said the town's 1/12th budget will be the same $2,130,000 for August and any succeeding months that Williamstown chooses to do the month-to-month budget necessitated by the postponement of town meeting.
In a normal year, town voters would have considered the next fiscal year's spending plan in May and passed a budget well in advance of the July 1 start of the next year.
Given the logistical difficulties of planning a socially distanced town meeting and the uncertainty of the impact to state aid due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Hoch and the Select Board have agreed to hold off on scheduling a date for the annual town meeting. Though he has said that, as a practical matter, he would like to get an actual FY21 budget approved in time to set the tax rate and send out the first round of property tax bills in October.
Anne O'Connor asked the town manager Monday whether that budget will be revised downward from the figures reviewed by the Select Board and Finance Committee in February and early March, prior to pandemic's impact in Massachusetts.
"At least somewhat, yes," Hoch said. "It's going to need some adjustment. There are places where it would be better for us to think about trimming expenses rather than just floating it all out of reserves."
Hoch said he planned a deeper discussion about the delayed annual town meeting at the board's regular meeting on June 22.
Tags: fiscal 2021, williamstown_budget,
