ATHOL — The Selectboard Tuesday night voted to approve a budget that will cover the town’s bill through the month of July. The board is taking advantage of a state law that allows cities and towns to approve month-by-month budgets, based on the current year’s budget, for the first part of fiscal year 2021, pending passage of a final state budget. Until the state finalizes a spending plan, municipalities won’t know how much they will be receiving in state aid to help cover the cost of education and municipal expenses.
“What we have tonight,” Town Manager Shaun Suhoski told the board, “will continue operations for the town of Athol through July. It’s probably closer to a two-twelfths budget when you look at the items that we pre-pay in July. This is about $60,000 higher than what we looked at last week, and it does include some revisions for additional overtime, due to vacations and other leave, and pre-payments in police, primarily, and fire as well.
“The general government departments are essentially the same as last week,” he continued. “Public safety, police and fire, moved a bit.”
Suhoski also pointed out a slight bump in spending for public services, mainly to cover the cost of professional services for a contract that must be paid in July, and for the cost of several matters related to the town’s public beaches.
“The primary movers, again, of what makes this a large outlay of cash, as is every July,” said Suhoski, “is the pre-payment of the retirement assessment. That is $1.63 million. And the total of our insurance coverages — including workers’ comp and our property, casualty and IOD (injury on duty) coverage for police and fire — is $430,000. So, between those, that’s $2 million-plus dollars of the total.
“For education, it’s only the Monty Tech assessment (almost $94,000 for the first quarter) that’s due in July. And then we’ll address the Athol-Royalston Regional assessment in the next iteration.”
Suhoski said the he is confident that the total package — nearly $3.4 million — “would represent the one-twelfth operating budget that we would seek the board’s assent to submit to Mass DOR (state Dept. of Revenue) for approval.”
Board member Holly Young sought Suhoski’s assurance that all department heads had seen the proposal and were comfortable with the spending plan.
“We talked about it at the department head meeting, where everybody was present,” he responded, “so, I guess my answer to you would be that everybody had more than ample opportunity to review and comment.”
The board then voted unanimously to approve the one-twelfth budget before moving on to consider the proposed budgets for the town’s enterprise funds. Those are the funds provided by ratepayers who use municipal sewer and water and who avail themselves of the town’s transfer station.
A motion to approve the proposal was passed unanimously without discussion. The total for the three enterprise funds is just over $547,000, again, for the month of July only. This includes $405,000 for sewer, $306,000 of which covers the division’s debt service; $98,000 for the water division; and, just over $44,000 for the transfer station.
In response to an inquiry from Finance and Warrant Advisory Committee Chair Ken Duffy, Suhoski and board Chair Rebecca Suhoski confirmed that each one-twelfth budget that may be proposed by the town manager needs the approval of the Selectboard, followed by the approval of the state Department of Revenue. Town officials are hopeful the process won’t be necessary beyond September, anticipating that a final state budget — including state aid to municipalities and public schools — will be enacted by that time.