Board of Selectmen Budget Workshop January 17, 2024

Should the unrestricted fund be tapped? Do plans for a new police station actually exist?

Warrant Articles and the Unrestricted Fund

The board dealt with some final, last-minute issues on the budget. The major issue is that the board would prefer an operating budget that is above the 4% tax cap. The tax cap prevents the Budget Committee from presenting to the voters a budget containing that spending. Hence the board must propose warrant articles for that spending. 

While the board is, of course, going to recommend the voters pass the warrant articles the board recommends, there’s spending in some warrant articles that the board feels is so necessary that it should have been in the operating budget and would be so were it not for the 4% tax cap. 

In addition to giving that high-priority spending its recommendation, the board has another tool for persuading the voters to approve the spending: it can tap the town’s unrestricted fund balance. 

The unrestricted fund comprises any money from the town’s operating budget left unspent at the end of each year. There’s always a little money left unspent because there are penalties for spending more than was budgeted. Last year $147k was added to the unrestricted fund.

The state recommends that towns keep an amount in their unrestricted fund that is no less than 5% of the town’s operating budget, and no more than 17%. Nottingham has 11.7% and has an announced target of 12%. 

The board discussed tapping the unrestricted fund to offset the large tax bill that residents recently received, but decided that no reasonable drawdown of this fund would reflect a meaningful tax reduction, and, that besides, such a reduction would be one-time only. 

However, a reasonable deduction from the unrestricted fund could eliminate or meaningfully reduce the tax impact of certain warrant articles that the board thinks are especially important for the voters to approve. Warrant articles that spend from existing fund balances are more likely to pass than warrant articles that require additional taxes. 

There were differences of opinion among the board about how much to take out of the unrestricted fund, with Selectman Welch arguing in favor of taking more out and Selectman Shirland arguing for less. 

Police Station Warrant Article

Selectman Welch questioned whether the reported plans drawn up in the 1990s for a new police station designed as an expansion of the fire station actually existed. 

Selectman Bartlett claimed that two people at the fire station assured him that they existed. 

Selectman Dabrio questioned what it meant to say that the plans exist. Are they just a sketch or are they actual blueprints? He did not believe that the town would have spent the money on actual blueprints unless there was a timeline for construction. He thinks that whatever the documents are they are just hypothetical and do not represent what should be considered buildable plans. Selectman Welch said that was the basis of his comment, as well. 

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