Dave Drugmand on the Town Budget

The Finance Committee has been busy finalizing the Town of Washington’s budget for 2024, in preparation for the Annual Town Meeting at Town Hall on Wednesday, May 10. Dave Drugmand, who has served on the committee for four years, took over as chair last summer. Others on the committee include vice-chair Deb Megas, Dick Spencer, the longest serving member, Linda Levernoch and Sherri Thomas. Recently, Dave shared the planning for the new fiscal year, beginning on July 1.

How does the new budget compare to last year’s?

The budget is still in flux, until the warrant is drawn up by the end of April. There’s a 6.55 percent increase over Fiscal 2023; inflation has been running at 9 percent so we’re doing okay.

Even with inflation going up, the levy limit can only increase 2.5 percent a year, or the taxpayers have to okay an increase. If we increased appropriations by 9 percent, we would have been in trouble with the levy limit. Last year, we passed an override of the levy limit, so we got some extra room. For Fiscal 2023, between the budget and the increase in the levy limit, we were $120,000 under the levy limit. For Fiscal 2024, with our current numbers, we’re looking to be $70k below the levy limit.

How will changes in the budget impact property taxes?

The tax rate for 2023 was $15.21 per thousand. Now we’re looking at $16.30, a $1.09 difference. For the average single-family home assessment, which is almost $304,000, the difference in yearly taxes would be $331. That’s with the numbers we have right now; these numbers are still in flux. Because the state hasn’t passed its budget yet, we don’t know how much money we will get from the state; we try to keep the revenue estimates on the conservative side. We’ll find out more in May or June, but we have to get the budget put together now.

Which of the changes are discretionary and which are mandates from the state?

We have to pay for vocational education, that’s a mandate. It changes by the number of students who elect to go to vocational ed. For fiscal 2023, we had four students in vocational ed. The year before we had zero. Now we’re anticipating six, as two more have applied.

There’s tuition, which is about $20k a year per student. We’re budgeting $119K for six students. Then there’s the transportation. Several years ago, the town bought a bus to take kids to vocational ed. We have an arrangement with Becket, so when they have students who need transport, they pay some of the cost. Becket has a bus that goes to Smith. We’ve been taking kids to McCann and Taconic. Right now, it’s pretty fluid, so in the budget, we put in a worst-case scenario: $67,500, which is a 121% increase. We think we can get that down a little bit, maybe to $58 or $60,000, but that’s a moving target.

The other moving target is the state reimbursement. Governor Maura Healey, in her budget, has proposed that 90% of transport be reimbursed. It has been 5%. By law, we’re supposed to get 100%. The House Ways and Means committee put their budget forward and they stayed at 5%. Even if we get reimbursed, it probably won’t help next year’s taxes.

For the regular school budget, the numbers are less than last year, based on enrollment. Our capital costs are down 16% from the year before, and our assessment for the operating budget for the district went down 2%.

How are town salaries keeping up with inflation?

For our Cost-of-Living increase this year for employees, we settled on a number of 7.5%. The highway department is the next biggest chunk of the budget. We lost one member of the highway crew and we’ve been trying to hire a third member. Our wage is not very competitive, so we’ve been having a hard time filling that vacancy. We’ve been talking about raising the highway department wages for everyone; we haven’t settled on it, but it will be much more than the 7.5%. We’ll make that decision at our next meeting. Of course, fuel and materials have gone up. Overall, we’re looking at an 8.8% increase in the Highway budget, pretty much along the lines of what inflation has been.

What are some of the factors working in our favor?

On the revenue side, one bright spot is the contribution of Wired West distributions to help pay the debt service on the fiber optic infrastructure. As was mentioned during the fiber optic infrastructure funding discussion, there was the possibility of money coming back to the town if the Wired West co-op did well financially and Washington had a good subscription rate. This has come to pass and on the budget spreadsheet we are currently slotting $30,000 in revenue from Wired West to help cover debt payments. It is not written in stone, as the Municipal Light Plant Board (MLP) has not yet officially voted.

Also, there was a discussion over the last few years about the use of Becket Beach. Becket charges Washington $2,500 a year for townspeople to use the beach, plus $5 a piece to buy a parking sticker. Last year, we increased the sticker fee to $25; $5 went to Becket and we put the rest in a revolving fund, so this year, $1,300 of the $2,500 is covered. Our goal is to get that to be self-funded.

What other factors go into the Fiscal 2024 budget?

Aside from the basic budget that’s appropriated from taxpayer money, there’s unexpended money from previous years (“free cash”). We tend to use that for one-time expenditures. These don’t directly affect the tax rate.

For this year, we have ash-tree removal of $15,000. We will continue to renovate St. Andrew's Chapel windows. We've earmarked $10,000 of free cash to explore what it will take to get better access to the chapel. [The town owns a few feet around the chapel but has no easement to access the building from the Bucksteep driveway.] We are also using $20,000 to look into Cemetery Development; there are several options on the table. Then there’s free cash for general maintenance and repairs, Old Town Hall repairs, and our regular Town Hall paint and carpentry; We budgeted a little over $11,000 for that.

Last year, we appropriated $20,000 for a new town administrator, to be shared with Middlefield. For an administrator’s salary and benefits, we’re looking at a figure of up to $100,000. Half of that is grant funded for the first year. Washington is the lead town in this arrangement, so, we will have to appropriate $50,000 this year and Middlefield will be paying us directly for their share. Our portion is a little over $25,000, and $20,000 of that will covered by the carryover from last year’s appropriation.

Are there any ways that townspeople can help balance the budget outside of paying their property taxes or renting to guests who pay a room tax?

Write to our legislators about the State’s payment in lieu of taxes (PILOT). A large portion of Washington is state forest and about ten years ago, the state decided to cut 30% of their PILOT. We dipped from $100,000 to below $70,000, gradually coming up a little bit. Now we’re back to $114,000. Even so, Pittsfield will pay us $137,000 this year for the Watershed property, a much smaller piece of land.

Also, residents could write to legislators about how Vocational Education and regional school district transportation should be more fully funded.

How can townspeople get more details on the budget? The warrant should be published online on Tuesday, May 2, here.