NAHANT — As the countdown to Town Meeting on May 17 continues, Town Administrator Tony Barletta has been working overtime making sure residents are properly informed.
Barletta has hosted several Town Meeting informational sessions, where he takes time to get the community familiarized with the different articles in the Town Meeting Warrant, and how possible votes on different articles could affect the town and community.
He began the session by explaining how the town builds the Omnibus budget and the work that went into it.
“This year was a pretty difficult year as far as building a balanced omnibus budget goes… The main issue here is that our expenses are increasing faster than our revenues,” Barletta said.
The first thing the town does, Barletta said, is look at what its revenues will be in the upcoming fiscal year. From there, it’s divided into two “buckets” — a General Fund Revenue bucket and a Free Cash Revenue bucket. What separates them is that the former is used for operating expenses (such as salaries, benefits, professional services, assessments and paying down debt).
“What we actually do is estimate how much money the town will bring in General Fund Revenue from July 1 of this year to July 1 of next year — and that’s the money that we’re spending in the General Fund account,” he said.
Free Cash, however, is used for one-time expenses such as capital investments, reserves and debt, though it’s generated from prior fiscal year actuals (sum of under-expended appropriations and over-generated receipts).
He reiterated that most of the town’s budget comes from property taxes.
Barletta noted that the town had to shave off an estimated $510,000 from the FY26 Budget Operational Requests, because the town did not have the funds to facilitate certain line items that were in the budget.
“The police department, the fire department, and the school all expressed their critical staffing needs,” he said. “Unfortunately, we’re not able to accomplish those this year.”
Police requested $19,000 for staffing needs and some capital requests, while the fire dept. Requested $54,700 for personnel costs and staffing needs — but the Johnson Elementary School requested $284 for school expenses and staffing needs.
However, Barletta noted the school request costs were largely offset by the circuit breaker and a preschool funding account, which had generated around $200,000. He said the town was able to use some of that money to offset the increase in expenses for the upcoming year.
Barletta continued, saying that with a potential override next year the town could potentially accomplish those goals. “It is desperately needed to be looked at closely, because their staffing needs are great.”
The FY26 General Fund appropriation for salaries and general operating expenses represented a decrease of $960,534 over FY25 (or a 5.1% increase). The biggest increases in the operational budget for the town was in Insurance and Benefits, which increased up to $173,129 (or 6.3%), while the school increased up to $112,110 (or 2.4%), due to an unexpected increase in Special Education Costs.
