Town Manager's Fiscal Year 2025 Budget 

The Budget Process

The Town Manager is responsible for working with department heads to put together a proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year. The Town Manager's budget is then presented to the Select Board for their input and feedback. Ultimately, the Select Board is responsible for submitting to Town Meeting a balanced budget for the upcoming fiscal year. This process involves department heads, the Finance Committee, the School Committee, and many external partners.

This process is a close partnership between the Town Manager's Office and the Finance Department and begins as early as November each year. The process involves reviewing current expenditures, plans for new growth within government operations, and identifying the projected revenue for the upcoming fiscal year to ensure a balanced budget can be proposed to Town Meeting.

When the budget is nearly ready for Town Meeting, the Select Board convenes a Tri-Board Meeting which includes the Select Board, Finance Committee, and School Committee. It is during this meeting that priorities are ironed out, long-range goals are determined, and a final review of the proposed budget takes place.

Town Meeting has the ultimate budgetary authority and must pass the budget before it becomes official. This happens at the May Annual Town Meeting.

Middle School Interest Payment - FY25

The budget represents modest growth in terms of new items but also includes the first interest payment on the Tyngsborough Middle School project. That interest payment comes to $1.2M which will be billed directly to residents as excluded debt in accordance with the Town Meeting and Town Election approval authorizing the project. The first year of the full debt payment on the Middle School will be realized in Fiscal Year 2026 (July 1, 2025 - June 30, 2026) and will be the first year of the Town's $1M annual contribution to lower the burden on taxpayers. As a part of the funding agreement, the Select Board and Finance Committee endorsed a plan to offset the debt payment by committing $1M from the general fund each year of the 30 year loan which will commence in FY26. Over the course of the loan, this $30M general fund contribution will substantially lower the impact on top of the average tax bill.

The Town Manager and Finance Director spent much of the spring working with the Town's borrowing agency to determine the approach for the permanent borrowing that would result in the lowest impact in FY25 and would ensure the most favorable long-term position as the Middle School Project approaches completion. By early April, it became clear that the Town's original approach to doing a permanent borrowing in November of 2024 following two short term borrowings (one in November 22 and one in November 23) was still the best financial approach. In doing so, the Town was able to lock in the interest payment that will come due in November 2024 when the last short term borrowing is closed out. This was presented first to the Tri-Board meeting on April 8th and a final discussion on the matter was held at the Select Board's meeting on April 22. 

As such, the budget that was presented in final form to the Tri-Board on April 8th was amended on April 22 prior to being posted as a part of the Town Meeting warrant to show an increase on the revenue side under "Excluded Debt" of $1,231,339 and by adding that same amount on the expenditures side under "Exempt Debt Service". As approved by Town Meeting and by Town Election, this appears as excluded debt on the FY25 tax bills which is billed on top of the tax levy.

Fiscal 2025 Budget Schedule