LYNNFIELD — At the Monday, May 16 Town Meeting, the finance committee will present a capital budget recommendation that is different from what is being presented by the SelectBoard, according to Finance Committee Chair Chris Mattia.
During a meeting on April 25, the SelectBoard voted to allocate an additional $100,000 for road construction, which increased the allocation to $600,000.
This week, the finance committee recommended that the allocation remain at the original $500,000, said Mattia.
“We want to assure the townspeople that this is not a recommendation against road upgrades,” he said. “We all live here, drive the roads daily, and walk the sidewalks. We are well aware of their condition. Our recommendation to not allocate the additional $100,000 right now is based on a few factors.”
One of the factors Mattia said this recommendation is based on is that the total dollars available for road construction in the upcoming fiscal year was already on pace to be at an all-time high, nearly matching what has been available for the last two fiscal years combined.
“Road construction in Fiscal Year 2023 is also seeing a one-time allocation from the Governor of approximately $230,000, and when combined with the Chapter 90 money allocated to Lynnfield, the state will provide close to $650,000 in road construction funds for Fiscal 2023,” Mattia said.
“An allocation by the town of $500,000, in addition to the $90,000 of unspent capital from Fiscal 2022, would bring total available funds for road construction to approximately $1.2 million dollars, which is over $320,000 more than Lynnfield has ever allocated to road construction in a single fiscal year.”
Fiscal 2023 starts on July 1, 2022 and ends on June 30, 2023.
Another reason for the committee’s recommendation is the inability to be able to spend allocated dollars.
“More available funds to spend on road construction does not always translate into more roads being completed,” Mattia said. “There are a small number of road contractors available to handle these types of road construction projects and those contractors allocate their time to all of the towns and cities in the surrounding area, not just Lynnfield.”
In Fiscal 2019, the last fiscal year where there was close to the same amount of available funds ($912,000), Mattia said they were only able to spend 80 percent of that in the fiscal year.
“In fact, over the last four fiscal years, our actual dollars spent on roads in those fiscal years is an average of $673,000 of total allocated capital/state funds in the given fiscal year,” Mattia said. “If you include capital dollars not spent in their allocated fiscal year, the average spend only slides up to $732,000. Therefore, an allocated figure for Fiscal 2023 of approximately $1.2 million more than covers the average annual spend.”
The third reason for the recommendation against the additional $100,000 allocation for road construction is market conditions, as inflation is at an all time high.
“Oil and gas prices, while they have stabilized over the last few weeks, still present a concern,” Mattia said. “Lynnfield has done a tremendous job at ensuring that we are in a healthy financial position. The capital budget this year is healthy, needed, and justified as is, and I feel that the town should be cautious and conservative with additional capital spending.”
Mattia emphasized that the finance committee is saying that its recommendation is that they are not allocating the additional $100,000 right now, but their recommendation is to allocate the $500,000 — in conjunction with the state funding — and allow the Department of Public Works director and building inspector to start to contract out the work.
In the early fall, before the Town Meeting, Mattia said the finance committee will request a road construction update on dollars allocated against dollars spent and contracted to be spent.
If the additional $100,000 is needed to complete road construction in Fiscal 2023, then he said the finance committee would make a recommendation that the funds be allocated at the fall Town Meeting later this year.
Allysha Dunnigan can be reached at [email protected].
