In its first meeting of the month, the Marion Finance Committee held a group meeting over the GoToMeeting video conferencing platform to discuss an updated agenda and resolve outstanding business. The meeting was held on May 18 after the initially proposed meeting date of May 6 was rescheduled.
Chairman Peter Winters led the committee through a preliminary review and approval of minutes. The minutes from meetings held on March 11 and April 1 were approved with unanimous votes.
After the concluding remarks pertaining to outstanding issues, the committee moved on to a review of the amended budget. Assistant Town Administrator Ju dy Mooney reported that the total projected general funds revenues for the Fiscal Year 2021 are $24,772,528. The projection is a 2.55 percent, year-to-year increase from FY20.
Town Administrator Jay McGrail noted that there is a projected negative outlook on state aid for FY21 due to the COVID-19 crisis. This came after an analysis and cross-reference of state aid received during the great recession.
“Our goal was to put together a proposed budget based on a negatively impacted state aid outlook,” said McGrail. “We tried to spread it out so that no one department was affected unfairly.”
Describing amendments to the budget, Mooney determined that the analysis of state aid and growth figures would be prudent. The changes indicate that last year’s state aid, amounting to $1,215,316, will likely decrease to $1,076,926.
Despite the marked decrease in revenue, Mooney noted that “Marion does not rely heavily on state aid,” and the 10 percent decrease from the previous year was factored into the budget in order to preempt decreases in aid caused by the COVID-19 crisis.
Mooney’s report anticipates a 15 percent decrease in overall funding to the town of Marion in FY21. That said, FinCom made specific efforts in its budgeting to guarantee that the cuts would not result in any reductions in staff.
“Thankfully, our conservative approach has allowed us to avoid any layoffs,” said McGrail. “We really tried to focus on cutting programs and services planned for FY21. That way, these programs are just no longer moving forward as opposed to cutting already existing programs.”
Even with the committee’s successful efforts to avoid any loss of jobs, the projected budget still includes sweeping cuts to Marion’s local programs, including a $60,000 cut to the schooling fund. Members of the committee made mention of their gratitude toward local groups for their cooperation during this crisis. “We told them what we needed to cut, and they chose where to cut the money,” said Mooney.
The hope for many committee members is that the cuts will not need to be as significant if reimbursement for increases in spending due to the virus is received.
“We will be looking into getting reimbursed for all of our COVID-19 spending,” Mooney explained to Winters. “Some will come from FEMA, some will come from Medicare. The hand sanitizer, plexiglass, gloves, and masks will all be reimbursed from different pools of funding, but some money needs to be accounted for preemptively in the budget.”
Even with precautions added to the budget, Mooney explained that FY22 would likely be the biggest challenge. “FY22 is going to be very difficult, more difficult than this year. We have a large amount of tax revenue that is not coming in because of closed businesses.”
One positive budget topic brought before the committee related to the town’s local receipts, a tax-free revenue source. The projected amount from receipts totaling $1,600,000 for FY20 has already been surpassed and is closer to $2,000,000. The committee made it clear that the added revenue will help ease future budget cuts.
Winters echoed the sentiment that a conservative approach is the most appropriate course of action in this economic climate. The Marion Finance Committee took efforts to aggregate more revenue to stabilization funds. These funds essentially act as monetary reserves in case of dips in revenue.
“Our greatest expense is the revenue being dumped into the stabilization funds, which is good news with economic uncertainty in the future,” said McGrail.
With the amendments to the budget addressed, Winters called for a motion to approve the budget. The motion unanimously passed, and the budget will be recommended at the Marion town meeting scheduled for Monday, June 22.
Town meeting is scheduled to be the town’s return to in-person meetings since the COVID-19 outbreak. The meeting will take place in three locations including a central location in Sippican School and a fourth location, the Tabor Academy fieldhouse, for a total of four different locations. Attendants will be socially distanced, and a screen with audio feeds will project the meeting to each location.
McGrail expanded on the impact of the virus on the town offices and explained some radical transformations taking place to guarantee the safety of the town’s workers. The changes include socially distanced office desks and the addition of plexiglass shields. Those changes, along with facial masks and gloves, will be the new normal when the offices reopen.
“We have hit our targets, and we have not had to do any layoffs,” McGrail told the committee. “All workers are working from home or in the office on abbreviated schedules.”
The offices are set to reopen in full capacity on Tuesday, May 26. The reopening will see the return of all current staff, but the offices will likely continue to be closed to the public until June, when further examination of the current crisis will take place.
The next Marion Finance Committee meeting will be held on Wednesday, June 3, at 7:00 pm. Barring any changes, the meeting is set to take place remotely on the GoToMeeting video conferencing platform.
Marion Finance Committee
By Matthew Donato