Dr. David Hopson
12 Littleville Rd
Huntington, MA 01050

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December 21, 2007

Many people make ‘New Year’s Resolutions” as they welcome in the new calendar year. For those who do—and then actually meet their resolutions—congratulations on your success. For those who do but have some difficulty meeting their resolutions, congratulations for setting a goal or goals and trying to improve in some way.

For our towns and the school district, January 1st almost marks the halfway point in our fiscal or operating year. Fiscal years are interesting items in that the federal government counts our earnings for tax purposes from January 1 to December 31, but the federal government fiscal year runs from October 1 through September 30. Massachusetts’ fiscal year, like that of our towns and the school district, runs from July 1 to June 30. Thus keeping track of various items related to budgets, appropriations, revenues and expenses vary significantly between our own household budgets (especially taxes), the federal government’s budget (which rarely seems to be set in a timely manner), our state government’s budget (which is rarely done in enough time for our towns to know what local aid will actually be) and our local budgets (both school and town).

We’re all thinking of the “New Year” at this point in time, but in very different ways. Individually, we’re setting personal and family goals and starting to collect our various tax documents. The federal government is arguing over the current year’s budget and passing continuing resolutions to fund ongoing government activities. The state government is beginning to provide dire predictions of tax revenue for the next fiscal year and, at least according to some accounts, borrowing against this anticipated revenue to pay current expenses. Towns are finalizing tax rates and beginning discussions regarding the budget that will start in July 2008, while cautiously watching for unexpected expenditures for the rest of this fiscal year. Because we have to have our budget to the towns 45 days before the first annual town meeting (regional agreement), the school district has been working on next year’s budget since October.

Both the school and town budgets must make a number of assumptions related to both state and federal local aid amounts. Assume too high and there will be a shortfall in revenue, assume too low and tax rates go up unnecessarily (or local services are cut to accommodate a lower revenue stream). Thus it is always a great relief when the state adopts an early resolution covering local aid, or strongly signals anticipated local aid, early enough for the school and towns to adjust their budgets accordingly.

Gateway’s FY’09 budget (beginning on July 1, 2008) is currently based upon getting the same level of local aid as we did this year and holding the budget increase to less than 3%, yielding an average town assessment of less than 5%. If educational aid increases, the town assessment will decrease. If educational aid decreases, then either town assessments will increase or educational services will decrease. The preliminary district budget will be presented to the School Committee in January with the budget hearing scheduled for March 5th. As currently envisioned, the preliminary budget already has reductions in services from this year’s budget in order to minimize town assessments—difficult choices are being made because members of the school committee recognize the financial difficulties their towns are facing.

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