SAUGUS — The Finance Committee on Wednesday voted unanimously to recommend a $107.5 million budget to Town Meeting, a $3 million reduction from the budget first put forward by Town Manager Scott Crabtree in February.
Notably, the recommendation fully funds the School Department’s budget request at $31.6 million, after Crabtree had initially proposed allocating $30.8 million to the schools and FinCom Chairman Ken DePatto said he did not believe the money to fully fund the request was there. Crabtree said the town opted to meet the request in an attempt to meet the needs of its schools.
“I think that’s pretty significant. We hope to support the school. Obviously, it’s a big ask,” he said, noting the $1.3 million increase put forward by the schools for the coming fiscal year. “It’s us trying to support their request.”
The request put forward to the FinCom from the School Department and School Committee itself is a $1.2 million reduction from the budget first proposed by Superintendent Erin McMahon in January. McMahon has been on paid administrative leave for the entirety of the budget process pending the results of an unspecified investigation, with Michael Hashem serving as acting superintendent in her stead.
In addition to the extra money going to the department’s operating budget, Crabtree and the FinCom recommended allocating $1 million to the Student Support Reserve Fund, which already has a balance in excess of $3 million. The schools can only access those funds for one-time expenses with approval of the FinCom and Town Meeting.
Crabtree said Thursday that the disparity between the budget he presented in February and the document now headed to Town Meeting is a result of the lack of finalized numbers when the budget was first created in February. He cited reductions in health insurance and the assessment levied to the town for the Northeast Metropolitan Regional Vocational School as areas where numbers fluctuated over the three-month budget process.
“Even now we don’t have a lot of finalized numbers,” he said.
He added that the budget is “conservative enough [that] we won’t find ourselves in a bind.”
Crabtree said conservative budgeting means the town can continue to avoid cuts, pumping additional funds into the budget should expenses come in higher than projected.
“It’s a lot easier to come in with underestimates than overestimates,” he said, citing state aid as a major unknown factor that could sway the town’s budget.
DePatto praised the work of Crabtree and his financial staff, including Treasurer/Collector Wendy Hatch. He said residents should be “enormously proud of ourselves as a community” because of the strong financial position the town finds itself in, with a AA+ bond rating.
