Saugus FinCom approves $78M budget

SAUGUS – The Saugus Financial Committee voted to approve the town budget of almost $78 million for the fiscal year 2012 with some minor changes from the last proposed budget.”It’s a very delicate budget,” said Town Manager Andrew Bisignani. “An awful lot of work and effort went into it.Some of the biggest changes to budget came from the town’s vote on the one-time, $1.27 million tax assessment from two weeks ago.The Financial Committee approved, $700,000 for the school budget, $150,000 for fire department overtime, $100,000 each for police overtime and the town group health plan, and $77,000 for the vocational school assessment.With the addition of the tax assessment, police salaries increased from $4.74 million to $4.79 million, fire department salaries went from $3.49 million to 3.59 million and the total school budget increased from $25 million to $25.7 million.Among the other changes voted on was taking $50,000 from selectman legal expenses and put into the town’s legal budget, which would bring the total Selectman budget from $90,144 to $40,144. The town’s legal budget increased to $141,500 with that change.