Budget Advisory Committee
Minutes 11/11/05
Attending
Bruce Dodge, Mike Steer, Norm Nickerson, Cliff Shaw
After a long hiatus while Mike digested and prepared the Budget Comparison spread sheets, the BAC assembled to go over the initial report.
Agenda,
1)Welcome new member Cliff Shaw to the BAC.
2)Restate the Selectmen’s charge for the BAC this year.
Compare Greenfield’s budget to our surrounding neighbors.
Establish a Capital Reserve fund Target as percentage of budget.
3)Review progress.
The BAC reviewed the comparison information:
Towns in the study included Greenfield, Lyndeborough, Hancock, Francestown, Temple, and Bennington. The problem and why it has take months to assemble the data is no two towns use he same budget reporting system. In order to compare apples to apples each line item has to be examined, not just department totals.
Each town had its areas where it was the highest spender, the average for all the towns was 8 areas, Greenfield had 12 areas where it had the highest budget item.
Individual department detailed comparisons are being prepared. Along with the comparison the tax impact per town was also analyzed.
We reviewed each Department, and noted where more information was needed and questioned some of the compared line items.
The committee thanked Mike for preparing the data. Mike said this was not the final draft as there was still more data the work through. The data was complete enough to present to the selectmen for review, and comment.
Capital reserve Fund Target.
Comparing Capital Reserve data from the surrounding towns. The Capital reserve ran from a low of 3% in Temple to a high of 10% in Bennington. In recent years Lyndeborough had a higher percentage approx 10% but cut it to 5% for last year. Not all our neighbors had a Capital Reserve Fund.
It BAC agreed a 5% was a reasonable target, if there was room in the budget this year for it. Where in the budget can we save to pay for the Capital Reserve funds.
A meeting with the Selectmen was booked, 8pm on the 25th of Nov
Meeting was adjourned.
Minutes Submitted by,
Bruce Dodge
Chairman BAC
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