Officially, the all-boards meeting each fall kicks off Harvard’s budgeting season. And Finance Committee Chair Don Ludwig quickly let all the boards and committees know that FinCom again expects strict limits on budget increases. Likewise, Town Administrator Tim Bragan downplayed prospects of more state aid, calling the current state surplus a one-time event.
But the all-boards meeting also highlights the town’s volunteer government, with more than 30 of the people at last Tuesday’s meeting being residents who have stepped up to work without pay on town boards and committees. Representatives from each town board or committee sat at the big table in upper Town Hall or—because there were too many to fit—in chairs a little bit away from the table. One by one, they described each committee’s goals and expectations for the coming year.
Select Board Chair Lucy Wallace laid out the board’s strategic plan, which is required by the Harvard Charter that voters approved last spring. In a brief document, the board described its vision for the year with four goals: (1) enhancing the town’s sense of community; (2) supporting and defining Harvard’s relationship with Devens; (3) maintaining the town’s fiscal sustainability; and (4) providing stewardship for Harvard’s natural, cultural, and historical resources.
Also in its strategic plan, the Select Board said it intends to work toward implementing the new charter and the town’s 2016 Master Plan, as well as improving the management of the town’s buildings and lands.
In many cases, representatives of other boards said their goals would be the same as last year’s, carrying out an ongoing mission. For example, Parks and Recreation Chair Doug Thornton described managing the town beach and sports fields, while also balancing the budget. And Libby Levison, who chairs the Board of Health, emphasized keeping residents informed about the tick problem, getting more permit applications online, and finding ways to save money at the Transfer Station.
For the Finance Committee, Ludwig said, the goal is always the same—to avoid the need for an operational override. “That’s our primary goal every year,” he said.
After each committee had had its say, School Committee Chair Mary Traphagen pointed out that almost every committee had used the word ‘grant,’ saying it was applying for state, federal, corporate, or other funds. Everyone, she said, was seeking ways to fund a committee’s work without “using that override word” that FinCom did not want to hear.
Fittingly enough, at that point the meeting turned to plans for the fiscal 2020 budget.
A Grinch-like budget schedule
Bragan began by immediately dampening hopes for any long-term increase in state aid based on the $1 billion state surplus residents might have heard discussed in current political ads. Bragan explained that much of that surplus was one-time revenue, because many people had taken capital gains and made state tax payments early for this year, before new federal tax laws cut deductions for state and local taxes.
New departmental budgets for fiscal 2020 are due at his office on Dec. 3 this year, Bragan said, giving each group a month longer than last year to prepare its budget. That was the good news.
The bad news was that the Select Board and FinCom are scheduled to finish reviewing those budgets on Dec. 21, when they will return them to the town administrator with questions for the departments and boards. So each board or department will receive its budget back with questions added by the Select Board and FinCom—on Dec. 24, Christmas Eve. (Last year, FinCom and the selectmen raised more than 80 questions about the school budget.) Boards are expected to answer those questions, make the required changes, and return the budgets to the town administrator by Jan. 3, 2019, a deadline that caused some shocked looks and groans at the table.
Following the current budget schedule, the 2019 Annual Town Meeting will fall on Saturday, May 4, Bragan said. But other dates in the schedule may change, as kinks get worked out of the sequence set by the new charter. Some of those dates were simply impossible to meet, Bragan said, and changes will have to be made in the charter.
Speaking for FinCom, Ludwig urged all the boards and committees to keep any increase to 1.5 percent over their current budgets and to include good, clear narratives with their budget requests to reduce the questions FinCom would need to ask. And he ended on an upbeat note, saying, “We may have found our new revenue source, which is being a movie town!”
