In an effort to mitigate “Town Meeting inefficiencies,” town officials are looking to modify the budget process in such a way that condenses the timeline for Town Meeting.
In effect, Town Meeting would no longer be split into two segments — Segment A, for non-financial articles, and Segment B, for financial articles — and all business would be conducted on Monday and Wednesday evenings until it was complete, beginning on Monday, May 5.
“Even though this is a change, our hope is that it would actually be better in the long run,” said Select Board Chair Elizabeth Dionne. “It would be something new; maybe it wouldn’t work, but maybe it would be a huge improvement.”
In addition to accommodating Town Meeting members with obligations at the end of June, it also will allow more time to close out the town books.
Town Moderator Mike Widmer voiced his support for the proposal.
“I think this makes a lot of sense,” Widmer said, following the town’s presentation of the change. “It’ll take some changes in cooperation but on balance, this is clearly the right step.”
Warrant Committee member Bill Anderson asked that if the town moves forward with the revised Town Meeting schedule, the Warrant Committee be consulted on the schedule before it is finalized.
School Committee members acknowledged the town’s rationale and that the decision was ultimately out of their control, but they still expressed some concern about its impact on the school’s budget process.
“Normally, the budget portion of the Town Meeting is conducted in June, so our deadlines …. are a little bit later than it would be under this proposal, where they push everything to May,” said School Committee member Amy Zuccarello.
According to Zuccarello, this proposal would involve four budget summits, concluding in March. The preliminary publishing deadline would be Jan. 17, 2025, and the final budget publication deadline would be March 21, 2025.
This year, with two budgets to prepare due to the then-pending Proposition 2 ½ override, budgets were ready by February but not finalized until after the School Committee election in April.
“If we go to the end of March, that is actually closer to Town Meeting, which I think is advantageous,” said Superintendent Jill Geiser. “Ideally, if we can try to vote it in somewhere around that same time frame, then that gives us time to prepare for Town Meeting.”
Geiser said internally that the district had already started its budget process.
School Committee members noted that the pushed-up timeline would affect the level of financial information available to incorporate into a new budget prior to the final portion of quarters three and four of the fiscal year. School Committee member Jeff Liberty said he sees the value in the change but wanted to acknowledge the trade-offs.
“There are things that always break late in the school year that have real implications,” he said. “Information becomes available that was not previously available that is germane to the budget and the school department, and the town.”
Zuccarello, on the other hand, said the shortened timeline may prove to be a positive adjustment.
“Because it’s earlier, there’s going to be a necessary preface that things will shift and change, and there may be reallocations and movement in some way,” she said. “A lot of the conversations we have in the last month prior to Town Meeting could be things we could have after Town Meeting, because we’ll have to be having them because we wouldn’t have known about them by the time the budget gets voted in.”
Members said they would be interested in asking town officials for an opportunity to openly reflect on the budget process at its culmination.