With the end of the fiscal year about five weeks away, and with a decreasing chance the town will be able to hold budget discussions and a Financial Town Meeting before then, Finance Director Amy Land has given the Town Council a number of options to consider in order to craft a municipal budget for 2021. The Financial Town Meeting was scheduled for Monday, May 4, but restrictions due to the current pandemic prevented the vote from occurring. The fiscal year ends on June 30 and 2021 begins on July 1, 2020.
Land said that whatever budget is passed before July 1 will include a bit of guesswork due to the fact that revenue is already falling.
“We have a $500,000 deficit at this point, which is not normally where we are at this time of year. We’re looking at a conservative deficit of over $800,000” by the end of the fiscal year. “We’re right on the mark for budget expenditures, but the falloff of revenue is significant,” Land told the council during a Zoom meeting on Wednesday, May 20.
On the positive side, Land said, “We went into this year with a very healthy reserve of $2.5
