ATHOL – At the Selectboard meeting of Tuesday, April 1, Town Manager Shaun Suhoski provided the board, the Finance and Warrant Advisory Committee, and the Capital Program Committee with a picture of the budget difficulties he’s dealing with.

The information provided, he said, “does not include any of our personnel costs or the fact we have four collective bargaining agreements open for negotiations. So, it’s an incomplete picture. I just want to be cautious, but I believe we’re going to be able to find a path forward.”

Despite concerns, Suhoski told the officials that he’s confident a way can be found to balance the budget for FY26 “not withstanding we have staff (costs) that we haven’t addressed yet.”

New revenue projections presented by the town manager included $412,000 in new property tax receipts, $150,000 in new growth, and $145,000 in state aid, including meals and cannabis taxes. These are in addition to what was collected for the current fiscal year.

An additional $87,000 in local receipts – which includes ambulance revenue, investment income and departmental fees – is also anticipated.

“You’ll see in the revenue projections that we feel we need to ask that we need to waive the policy where we contribute 10% of free cash – this year it’s about $182,000; that we not put it into stabilization but use it to patch this budget to get us to the next fiscal year,” Suhoski said. “In addition, another non-recurring revenue source of the assessor overlay reserve of $125,000 also be used. We really are in deficit. We’re looking at one-time revenues just to get us to baseline.

“But we’re not dipping into our stabilization (account) – we’re just not contributing to it, and we still have $1.9 million in stabilization. So, we’re talking about $1.1 million in new revenue.”

The town manager went on to explain he and his budget team anticipate just over $1 million in increased expenses for FY 26.

The town’s assessments for the Monty Tech and the Athol-Royalston Regional School District will be $238,000 higher than for the current fiscal year. Retirement assessments will increase by $211,000. Health insurance is expected to increase by 18% over the last fiscal year, which Suhoski said is double what is expected in any given year.

“We have also added the three firefighters that were approved in the override last year,” said Suhoski, “and we’ve been advertising the fourth position in hopes of getting a paramedic. That job has been posted five times over the past six months. We have not been able to get a paramedic. There was a promise made to the town last year that that fourth position would be paid for from the budget. That’s a ($95,000) cost for the full year and we have to make sure we fund it.”

Other anticipated increases include $100,000 for retirement-related costs and $85,000 for services such as property and casualty insurance and workers compensation.

While it appears that anticipated revenues outpace expected costs, Suhoski cautioned, that “we have 109 full-time employees, another couple dozen part-time employees – we haven’t addressed that yet.”

Four collective bargaining agreements are still waiting to be settled.

Following Suhoski’s presentation, Selectboard member Rebecca Suhoski made a motion “to approve a variance to our fiscal policy to allow the contribution of 10% of free cash (to stabilization) not to happen this year in order meet the budget deficit for FY26.” After the motion was approved unanimously by the board, the FWAC and CPC both voted without dissent to support the motion.

“With that guidance in hand,” said Suhoski, “it’s very helpful and we can finalize the numbers, continue working through the employee (contracts) process, and come back to you with the budget.”

Greg Vine can be reached at  gvineadn@gmail.com.