Select Board Recap - March 23, 2026

Hello Dartmouth, I'm Cody Hatcher, Town Administrator here. I'm joined by Gary Braley, our Director of Budget and Finance. And today we're going to give you an overview of the March 23rd Select Board meeting that was held jointly with the Dartmouth School Committee to discuss the fiscal year 2027 budget. It was a productive meeting that we had. It started off with the School Committee's

public budget hearing, which we heard from a number of Dartmouth residents regarding the overall town budget and the School Department's budget. And then we got into a presentation that myself and Gary gave regarding the town's overall financial plan. So Gary, do do you want to give a just overview of what exactly our budget process is here in Dartmouth? Sure, thanks Cody. So, we

start the process usually in November, typically in December in any given fiscal year. That starts with budget message that I put out to the department heads along with the capital requests.

That gets set up usually in December.

That feedback starts coming back from the departments for their budget requests and the capital. We then meet what I call the one-on-ones with department heads and invite the Finance Committee at that time to work through those budget requests. Then after that we'll meet with capital. We just had finished that process actually, voted on the recommended capital items for the spring town meeting. Then the Finance

Committee will then meet with the larger departments DPW schools police then vet through those budgets and listen to presentations from those departments. The full budget is presented to them usually around mid-April and then after that the recommendation is made to the Board of Selectmen for warrant article on the budget. But in addition to going over the overall budget process in town, we

reviewed our strong financial policies that the town has and that is how we incorporate our budget. We went over what our general fund operating expenses are made up of. And to a lot of people's surprise, our benefits make up over 16% of our operating budget and our cost of education, which includes Dartmouth Public Schools, New Bedford Voc Tech, Bristol Aggie and the benefits for those

school department employees actually makes up over 65% of our budget, around $73 million. It's important to show what exactly our budget is made up of. We then went on to talk about fixed costs.

And fixed costs really are those things that we don't have a ton of discretion over. That's our health insurance contributions for employees, our retirement assessments, sick vacation buyouts, workers compensation insurance, property insurance, things of that nature. And that makes up almost $34 million of the town's general fund budget. As far as revenues go, revenues are the value of which they are increasing is

decreasing over time. And so, we're bound by Proposition 2 and 1/2, which is essentially the prior year's tax levy plus new growth and 2 and 1/2%. Our state aid, which is another major component of our revenues, is only anticipated to be a 1.2% increase from FY26 to FY27. Our local receipts are relatively flat. We've always taken a very conservative approach with our budget in Gary. And this year in

particular, we're budgeting 93% of our reoccurring local receipts from the prior fiscal year. And so, we we typically don't like to go over 90. And so, I think the town has taken a very conservative approach in the past. And we just wanted to share that we're we're not being as conservative as we used to be. We still feel comfortable, but we really are at that maximum of estimated revenues, particularly with local

receipts. And then we have other available funds and indirect costs. And that's that's really what makes up our our revenues.

As you get into new growth, which is basically what the tax levy, the 2 and 1/2 plus the new growth, our new growth is slowing down significantly. This year, our new growth was approximately $821,000.

And that's down from over a million dollars in fiscal '24 and fiscal '25.

And so, we're projecting $800,000 in '26. All of that leaves you with a fiscal '27 revenues of a around $113.2 million.

It's over a 4% increase from last year, which is great. But when you take into account our fixed costs and the schools are looking for a 6.85% increase. We're essentially not able to cover to cover that. So, that that's the premise of what the discussion was at the meeting with Select Board and School Committee.

We were able to free up some additional revenue and and 4.9% I think is what what we are able to do for the schools, which is more than we initially planned for, which is a good thing. But, it's still not the 6.85% that the schools are looking for. There was a lot of really good dialogue between members of the Select Board and members of the School Committee and an understanding of the

As we see the economy probably in in the past few months start to slow down a little bit more than than normal.

We've been at some of the MMA meetings, Mass Municipal Association meetings in in January where they spoke about revenues not coming in to meet expenses, almost some kind of same item that we're talking about here right now.

And and that's due to a slowdown of the economy. And what that means is that trickles down to cities and towns in Massachusetts. We rely heavily on state aid, which includes Chapter 70 money for the schools, unrestricted local aid like lottery.

And which makes up most of our income that we get from from the Commonwealth. So, as that slows down, as mentioned, we we want to remain a little bit conservative so that we have balances to weather those storms.

But, we're a little cautious right now with how we're spending those revenues because we just don't know what's going to happen in the next few budget versions that come down from the state.

Currently, the the governor has has put her budget out and the next round of budget will be the house and then so on and so forth. So, we're watching that and keeping a close eye on on the revenues that come down. And so, where we left things with the meeting last night is essentially the School Committee is going to work with their administrative team to review what their fiscal 27 budget essential needs are and

hopefully we can come to a consensus and get through the fiscal 2017 budget process and going forward we will work collaboratively with the budget advisory group, select board, finance committee and school committee to determine a long-term solution to some of these revenue challenges. So, if you're looking for more detailed information, I encourage you to tune in to the March 23rd school committee meeting and I look

forward to you joining us for the next select board meeting recap. Our next select board meeting is on March 30th.

Thank you. Take Thanks for joining us, Gary. Thank you, Cody.