Finance Committee issues letter on Budget Guidelines for FY2014 and urges residents to get involved

Budget guidelines For Fiscal Year 2014
Residents Need to Get Involved Now

This letter is a call to residents of Wayland to get involved in budget discussions now, and not wait until next April when we meet at Annual Town Meeting.
 
Each year at this time the Wayland Finance Committee sets out financial guidelines for various Town departments and the school committee (the “Departments”) to follow as they begin to construct their budgets for next fiscal year.  On October 3rd, we completed our deliberations regarding the guidelines for the fiscal year 2014 (July 1, 2013 – June 30, 2014).  On October 4, we sent our guidelines letter to the Departments (a copy of the budget guideline letter can be viewed on the Finance Committee web site at: www.wayland.ma.us/Pages/WaylandMA_Finance/index).  
 
To be clear, at this point we do not intend to recommend that Town Meeting cut Department budgets by 10% across the board.  Rather, the point of the exercise is to start a healthy, robust, and respectful discussion among residents regarding the inevitable trade-offs between the costs and benefits of providing services, in part so as to negotiate an appropriate tax rate for our residents.
 
We have three major goals in mind by requesting Departments to consider potential reductions to their budgets.  First, if residents decide that they want further reductions in the tax rate or even to hold it steady, this exercise will help the oversight boards identify programs that might be cut, based upon a prioritization of services.  Second, this is a good exercise for Departments to identify programs and services with minimal community support.  This process may identify services that if reduced or eliminated, would not have a material impact on our community.  Third, this is an opportunity for residents to tell the oversight boards and elected officials which current programs and services are important to them. 
 
In this letter, we explain the options we will consider together as we enter into the new budget season.  This year, the Finance Committee asked town departments and the School Committee to prepare a level service budget and to present prioritized budget cuts adding up to 10% of the level service budget baseline.
 
In recent years, the budget guidelines have generally requested that Departments deliver budgets that provide residents with a level of service that remains unchanged from year-to-year (we have termed that a “level service budget”), and for the past several years we have worked to maintain those services within the scope of a budget that increases the tax levy by no more than 2.5% per annum.  
 
At the same time, in recent years we have also responded to taxpayers who called for a lower tax rate.  During the past two fiscal years, Town Meeting voted to apply significant amounts of accumulated free cash and overlay surplus against our operating budget.  For instance, for the current fiscal year, we recommended—and Town Meeting voted—to spend more than $6.5 million in free cash and overlay surplus to offset property taxes—more than 10 percent of our operating budget.   This move cut the FY13 real property tax rate about seven percent against last year’s rate.    
 
At this time, the town has only a little over $6 million in free cash.  Even if we spent all of our free cash this next fiscal year we could not maintain both level services and hold the tax rate where it is.  Put simply, we are at the point where we need to either cut services or raise the property tax rate back up to where it was last year or somewhere in between.  
 
The level service budget, promoted for many years, has provided a balance of services to residents who comprise a wide range of needs and interests across the fabric of our community.  
 
The Schools are the most significant service provider in Town, and their needs include teacher salaries, facilities maintenance, a wide variety of programs and the need to stay at the front of evolving educational trends.  A level service budget allows the schools to continue to provide the same services, but due to inherent increases in operating costs, maintaining level services means increasing costs.
 
Departments on the Town side of the equation wrestle with similar budgetary issues.  A level service budget means that the Town continues to provide existing programs for seniors, maintains roads, playgrounds and parks, oversees new development and regulates conservation requirements, oversees health-related issues from clean water to the proper building of and maintenance of septic systems, and continues to provide the current level of safety services provided by the Town among other services.  
 
As noted above, a Fiscal Year 2014 level service budget would require the Town to increase its property tax rate because the Town does not have as much free cash to offset against the budget as we did last fiscal year and operating costs tend to increase year over year.   
 
The Finance Committee hears from a group of residents on a regular basis at our meetings throughout the year.  The strong message we receive from these residents is that costs can be cut and that we need to work more towards a level funded budget, which may or may not cause services to be cut.  A level funded budget is where the budget for the succeeding year is equal to the amount of the budget in the preceding year.   Some believe that we can deliver the same level of services for less by tightening expenditures within all Departments.  Yet others say that even if we become more efficient, we still need to reduce or eliminate services in order to reduce the overall tax burden to our citizens.
 
In response to this vocal and constant message for tax relief, a portion of our budget guideline letter for fiscal year 2014 requests that in addition to the level service budget, Departments must also consider services and/or programs that they might reduce or eliminate to shrink their budgets by 10%.  We picked 10% because it roughly equals the cuts we would need to make from a level services budget to hold the tax rate flat.
 
We invite residents to get involved during this budget season, beginning now and running all the way to Annual Town Meeting.  The Finance Committee feels strongly that the Departments need to make these initial budgetary decisions given that the   Departments best understand what the residents of Wayland want in terms of services as well as the cost of providing those services.  
 
We will consider Departmental budgets when we begin our budget deliberations in January, but we will only do so after substantive Departmental budget discussions, deliberations, and decisions take place, with significant resident input.  The largest departments include the Schools, the Department of Public Works, Facilities, the Library and the Fire and Police Departments.  Attend the relevant boards’ meetings, talk to your elected officials, and let them know how you feel about the services they provide.
 
We urge you to get involved. 
Town of Wayland Finance Committee  

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