Mike Sullivan handed out his initial budget projections last night at the Board of Selectmen’s annual budget meeting, which is held jointly with the Warrant Committee and the department heads. The basic assumptions contained in this initial budget is that town budgets will increase 2%, except for employee benefits which go up 7% (for health insurance and pensions).
Warrant Committee chair Gus Murby noted that while this is the year to budget for those things that have been deferred in the past several tough budget years, where the financial pressures are not expected to be as great this year as they have been in recent years, Gus still noted the need to keep budgets lean due to expected town expenditures related to special situations. He listed the DPW garage, the Gatehouse 40B, and the Medfield State Hospital as the examples.
The budget meeting is the opening of the town’s annual budget season, that next has each department preparing its own individual budget requests, then defending those to both the Board of Selectmen and the Warrant Committee, and culminates with the passage of the budgets at the annual town meeting (ATM) the last Monday in April.
The Building Committee has indicated that it intends to ask the town to vote to build a new DPW garage at the ATM.
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