In Weymouth, Mayor Robert Hedlund presented a draft budget for FY 2021.
Hedlund presented the $177,573,130 budget to the Town Council via a Zoom meeting. He says the budget is in preparation of significant declines in state and local revenue.
“This budget that we’re submitting really is an exercise in fiscal necessity to hopefully put us in a position to get through this recession with as much as what we’ve built remaining intact,” said Hedlund. “This document is not without pain. There were difficult decisions to be made in every department.”
Hedlund lauded the effort by Chief of Staff Ted Langill, who worked tirelessly to recreate the budget. In total, it’s a 1.8 percent increase from last year. Fixed costs have increased by $3.8 million.
Hedlund says to offset those costs, department budgets and line items have been reduced by $1.7 million.
Langill expects that this budget will change, as the fiscal impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic may not be known for a while.
“The most difficult part for me to be honest, with drafting the FY21 budget is the unknown. It’s hard to plan with so much unknown before us. How much worse does the situation get? What will be the cuts in local aid, and for how many years?”
He said that the town has created a conservative budget in recent years, which gives them a little more room to address the crisis.
Hedlund says the town built up its stabilization fund to $8.2 million, up from $1.1 million in 2016.
In this budget, remaining free cash will be used to create a $1.5 million reserve fund to fill revenue gaps to keep current services in place.
