Berkshire Planning Commission FY23 Budget Sees Growth From New Grants
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Berkshire Regional Planning Commission's fiscal year 2023 budget has increased by about $886,000 from this year largely due to grants for economic development, housing, environmental and energy, and public health programs.
BRPC's finance committee on Thursday gave the $5,379,584 budget a positive recommendation.
"We have had a fair number of, and a growing number of grants coming in for public health purposes, and this is really related to the strong emphasis the state has put on public health," Executive Director Thomas Matuszko said.
"And also, we're getting a continued strong emphasis in our economic development planning, so I think those are both good."
He added that he believes the COVID-19 pandemic has reawakened everyone's awareness of the importance of public health and as part of that, there was legislation passed to improve the delivery of public health services.
Among the planning commission's new revenue is $300,000 from the state Department of Public Health for shared services, $250,000 for local health support contract tracing, and $112,500 from the New England Rural Health Association for rural vaccine equity.
"I do want to point out and the revenue section we do have two earmarks from the state, one is for housing and one is for the outdoor recreation." office manager Marianne Sniezek explained.
"We also have a new funding source, we have Berkshire Gas and National Grid on a Mass Save energy efficiency grant, so we have some new funding sources, and a lot of the revenue is a lot of the same contracts year after year that some of the dollar amounts haven't changed much, but when you get down towards the end, we have quite a few new grants that are coming in that are awarded we're just waiting for the sign contracts."
BRPC is receiving new revenue of about $192,000 as a state earmark for an outdoor recreation website and about $45,000 for housing.
The planning commission is also receiving an approximately $15,000 increase for state District Local Technical Assistance from the previous year totaling about $240,000 and $10,000 more for transportation planning from fiscal year 2022, amounting to about $689,000.
Though this year BRPC was not successful in obtaining new Community Development Block Grants, receiving no funding after being granted more than $250,000 the previous year.
There was also about a $575,000 increase in salary expenses that are primarily related to a new public health substance abuse disorder planner, two open full-time positions for the public health program, three interns for the environmental and community programs, and an open administrative position.
A $3,500 cost of living adjustment and merit pay increases are also responsible for the increase.
"I think in a nutshell, we have more expenses, but we also have more revenue," Committee Chair Malcolm Fick observed.
"It's laid out pretty well, things balance out, it's pretty impressive, the growing organization."
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