Services in Saugus to suffer from spending freeze

SAUGUS – Residents can expect to see less landscaping about town, fewer maintenance projects on public buildings and almost no street sweeping once a municipal spending freeze goes into effect March 31.Town Manager Andrew Bisignani said it’s not unusual to issue a spending freeze, but he does generally do it later in the year.”All non-essential spending will be stopped as of the 31st,” Bisignani said. “Obviously mandated spending will be allowed but that’s it.”The trickle down won’t affect Public Safety, as Bisignani said the Essex Street Fire Station isn’t in danger of closing yet. What it will result in is dusty streets, less landscaping on town owned property than has been done in the past and no more purchases such as sand or salt.Freezing the budget is nothing new for the School Department.In years past, Superintendent Keith Manville has typically frozen the budget as early as February to preserve funds for unexpected expenditures.However, this year Manville didn’t need to freeze the budget because there was no non-essential spending since the School Department had no discretionary funding.”I talked to the principals around December and told them I wasn’t freezing the budget but we would have to monitor it,” Manville said. “They all looked at me incredulously and said, ‘What would we freeze?'”Bisignani said at this point there are too many uncertainties with the budget to not put a hold on spending.The town was expecting a small windfall as a result of enrolling employees into the state’s healthcare program, Group Insurance Commission (GIC), but it’s unclear if that will happen.”We do expect to see something from the GIC, we just don’t know how much,” Bisignani said.In the meantime, Bisignani said claims are still coming in from when the town was self-insured and reimbursements are coming in from the town’s stop-loss insurance policies.Until the incoming and outgoing funds are balanced, Bisignani said he doesn’t want to take the chance of overspending.”There will be limited street sweeping and there will be no regular preventative maintenance as there was in the past. There will only be very essential services,” he said.