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Minutes - July 31, 2002
Finance Committee
Present: Paul Giese, Mary Cancian, Al Schmerzler, Robert Steinbrook, Pat Phillips
Absent: JR Robinson, Susan Brooks
The new Legal Expense Monitoring Procedures document was reviewed. The final draft of this new procedure had just been passed by the Board of Selectmen 2:1 at the Selectmen's meeting Monday, July 29th, and is now in force. We discussed the change in this document from the FinCom's initial draft in May, that boards anticipating expenditures in excess of $10K should initiate this review process ASAP, but not necessarily before informing legal counsel. Since the process is primarily for information purposes, the FinCom agreed in principle to this change.
The updated Funds Available Analysis (FAA) model was reviewed. The changes to the model recommended in the July 11th FinCom meeting had been added (with the exception that the Minuteman Vo-Tech School was not included as a required expenditure), resulting in a no override Baseline budget guideline of minus 2% of the 2003 Operating Budgets. The model estimated that it would take a $300K override in 2004 just to bring the Boards' operating budgets (over and above required expenditures) even with 2003, i.e. with a $300K override and the same allocation of funds among the Boards as in 2003, the 2004 budgets would be the same as 2003. This is because the growth of Required Expenditures predicted for 2004 was 19.4% over 2003, compared to a 4% growth of Fund
Available. A discussion of the reasonableness of this result concluded that it was not overly conservative, with New Construction, Local Revenues and State Aid equally vulnerable to further decreases as well as increases. Additional information by the Fall (particularly for Local Revenues and State Aid) would enable further adjustment to the FAA model for the final Baseline guideline determination to give to the Boards.
It was agreed that the FAA model would be further updated for the FinCom meeting August 29th, with the Baseline definitions and percentage decrease/increase guideline sent to the Boards on August 30th. The FinCom would then hold a “kickoff” meeting (suggested for Sept. 12th at the regular FinCom meeting @ 8PM), inviting all the Boards, to explain and clarify the budgeting approach for this year.
Action: Update FAA model with best estimates available by end of summer
Resp. Paul - August 29th
The meeting was adjourned. The next meeting date will be Thursday, August 29th.
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