2009 Annual Report.pdf - Town of Milton

partmental impacts we added another $476,000 to the contingent budget to
bring the contingent budget to $3,376,104 over the non-contingent budget.
The Warrant Committee decided after much debate to allow the Police and
Fire departments to have a bottom line appropriation. That means that there is
only a total amount recommended for the Police and Fire budgets. There is no
break down between salaries and general expenses as there has been in prior
years.. We did this to give the public safety departments as much flexibility as
possible to manage their budgets. A bottom line appropriation will allow those
departments to transfer budget amounts between salary line items and general
expense line items with only the approval of the selectmen. This flexibility is
important because of the lack of proper funding especially in the non-contingent
budgets for the efficient management of those departmental budgets.
We did not include salary increases when building up our contingent budget
number and that is true. However that is not to say that salary increases will
not occur because they undoubtedly will. Also the schools have a bottom line
appropriation as will the Police and Fire departments if Town meeting approves
the public safety budget article as recommended. These departments will have
the ability to move dollars from non-salary line items to salary line items should
they choose. We have warned the departments that full staffing of their budgets
may not be sustainable into FY11. The allocations provided by all the departments
allocated the contingent amounts in the manner that we suggested
which will result in a reduced salary budget.
E. Budget Impact
1. Non-Contingent Budget
The non-contingent budget will require cuts in service across the board.
We arrived at the non-contingent budget by funding all departments except
those that represent fixed costs at 1.06% below their FY09 funding level. There
are no salary set asides in the non-contingent budget. All departments will be
required to pay any salary increases out of a budget that is already 1.06%
smaller than the previous year. Salary set asides would have simply taken more
money away from the departmental budgets and as a result would not have
helped the situation. The non-contingent budget will result in significant cuts
in personnel and result in large cuts in services.
a. School Department
The School department has a non-contingent budget that is $465,000 less
than its FY09 appropriation. This will result in the closure of an elementary
school and the loss of 47 positions, 37 of which will be professional personnel;
1 administrator and 9 non professional personnel. Of the professional personnel
it is estimated that 17 will be classroom teachers. Cuts will be necessary in
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