By MAUREEN DOHERTY
NORTH READING — Town and elected officials tasked with crafting the FY26 budget to present to voters at Town Meeting in June have hunkered down in workshops this week.
To date in March, the Select Board has taken under advisement the budget requests of two-thirds of the town’s department heads, along with the accomplishments of each department in the past year and the challenges each department faces in the delivery of services in the coming year.
Next Monday night, March 31 has been set aside to review the three largest municipal budgets: Police, Fire and DPW with Police Chief Mark Zimmerman, Fire Chief Don Stats and DPW Director Joe Parisi.
On Wednesday night (after press time) the Select Board held a workshop at Town Hall to drill down into the budget details. Across town, the School Committee held a workshop of its own in the Distance Learning Lab at NRHs. Originally, this meeting night was to be spent as a joint meeting of both boards plus the Finance Committee and Financial Planning Team, but Town Administrator Michael Gilleberto told the Transcript on Monday afternoon that they had all agreed the time would be better spent in separate workshop settings.
A future joint meeting will be announced at which the public will be invited to participate in a Q&A with both boards, the FinCom and the FPT.
It’s still very early in the process and there is time to crunch the numbers. The Select Board anticipates signing the June Town Meeting warrant and giving its budget recommendations on Monday, May 5. The School Department anticipates voting on its budget on April 28.
At this stage, the School Department is looking to close a $1.4M shortfall and as of figures presented March 3, the municipal side of the ledger is faced with a shortfall of about $851,000, but these numbers are preliminary and subject to change. For instance, state aid numbers are not finalized.
The current budget challenges faced by those tasked with crafting the FY26 annual budgets for the schools and municipal government were not unanticipated. They’ve been discussed at length during the past several budget cycles. Following the failure of the Prop. 2 1/2 general override last June at the polls to fund the general operating budget, repairs to the Chestnut Street bridge and a new ladder truck for the Fire Department, the voters returned to Town Meeting last October and approved two separate debt exclusion overrides, one for the bridge and the other for the ladder truck.
Preliminary revenue figures
As of March 3, the funds available to the town through property tax revenue projected for FY26 based on the preliminary “cherry sheet” was $66,563,521. This reflects a 2.6% increase over the actual FY25 tax revenue of $64,845,255.
How is this estimated 2.6% increase generated? According to the March 3 chart provided by Finance Director Laurianne Galvin: the prior year adjusted levy limit was $59,183,484. To this sum is added the allowed 2.5% increase in tax levy of $1,479,587. The town’s project new growth figure for FY26 is $509,362 plus an additional $307,638 generated from the Martins Landing condominiums, which are reaching build-out. This gives the town an adjusted levy limit of $61,543,071. Added to this figure is tax revenue generated under the debt exclusion line item of 127,650 plus a debt exclusion line item for the high school/middle school project of $4,892,800 to reach the total estimated tax generation of $66,563,521.
State aid
The town also projects to receive approximately $10,477,068 in state aid in FY26 from a variety of state programs, a 2.5% increase over the FY25 state aid figure of $10,217,049.
Local receipts
The town also projects generating $5,179,500 in local receipts, from a variety of sources, an increase of 1.7% over FY25. This includes $2.7M in excise tax revenue and $785,000 in investment income, for example.
Other sources of revenue
Other sources of revenue the town can draw upon to fund its annual budget are projected to be $2.2M, a 7.7% increase over FY25. These sources includes $1.3M in the debt services stabilization fund, a $300,000 transfer from the cell tower account and $600,000 from PFA Stabilization fund — a means of offsetting increases in health insurance costs for employees.
Added together, the town is starting with a projected general fund revenue of $84,420,089 for FY26 — a 2.71% increase over the actual FY25 revenue of $82,195,984.
Now the number crunching begins as the Select Board, Financial Planning Team (which is comprised of town department heads) and the Finance Committee the comb through the town’s anticipated expenses to arrive at a balanced budget for the voters at Town Meeting to consider.