05/03/2010 Annual Town Meeting - Laserfiche WebLink

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Dear Fellow Residents of Mashpee: This informational packet includes a summary analysis of items that residents will be asked to vote on at the May P Town Meeting. The Finance Committee is a volunteer group of 7 members appointed by the Town Moderator. As outlined in the Town of Mashpee Charter, the Finance Committee serves as Town Meeting advisors to you, the voters of Mashpee, who serve as the legislative branch of our municipal government. The role of the Finance Committee is to review the financial business of the Town of Mashpee and present its analysis and recommendations to the residents before each Town Meeting relative to the annual budget as well as all the articles which come before Town Meeting. Since the principal focus of the May Town Meeting is a review and vote on the municipal budget for the next fiscal year, the following report provides our explanations, rationale and analysis regarding the Fiscal Year 2011 Operating Budget. You will find a complete breakdown and comparison tables of the expenses in FY 2011 versus FY 2010, as well as an explanation of the calculation of the projected tax rate which can be anticipated should the budget be approved. On behalf of the Finance Committee, I hope you will find this information educational and informative. All municipal departments struggled this year to meet the Town Manager's edict to reduce their budgets below the current year's appropriations. The budget presented in Article 2 of the Warrant represents a $794,000 reduction in cost, or 1.7%, from last year. The budget reductions will be accomplished by not filling a number of vacant positions, and in the case of the school department, by additional staff reductions. In addition, the town will see reductions in the major cost items of debt service and employee medical insurance payments in FY 11. The cost reductions in these two areas alone will snake up $414,000 of the $794,000 budget reductions. Based on the budget presented, the FinCom projects the tax rate to support this budget will increase by $0.64/$1,000 of assessed value to $8.43/$1,000. A legitimate question is how can the tax rate go up when the budget is going down? The answer is that non -property tax revenues, i.e., municipal receipts, municipal "free cash" and state revenues will be some $820,000 lower in the coming year. These lower non -property tax revenue projections will make up 18.5 cents of the 64 cent increase. But the major contributing factor in the projected tax increase is a further 5.5% decline anticipated in property values which means that the cost to operate the town must be spread over a smaller tax base. This decline will have a 45.5 cent impact on the tax rate. In addition to a table showing the calculation of the projected tax rate, this year we have included a brief discussion on the relationship of the FinCom's prior projected tax rates calculated in March of the year and the final tax rate which is struck in November. Also included is a table showing municipal appropriations from FY06 through FYI 1. Hopefully, you will find this useful information as well. The Warrant Articles included in the FinCom report provide a summary of each article and the FinCom's recommendation for Town Meeting. I hope you will take the time to review this information. The FinCom does recommend approval of Article 2, the FYI Municipal Budget, along with the accompanying budget -related Articles 3 and 4, the Capital Improvement Budget and the town's assessment for the Cape Cod Regional Technical High School, respectively. While the FinCom remains concerned about the recent increases in the town's portion of the technical high school cost over the past two years, it did vote to recommend approval of the Article. 3 u4I,� yI F�1111L �I.JiI�