Mansfield Selectmen Ponder School Budget Gap

A letter from a resident prompted selectmen to react with irritation to a recent comment by school finance director Ed Vozzella this week.

Vozzella had commented at a school committee meeting that the schools might be able to dip into town savings to balance their $2.9 million budget gap, dubbing the town's stabilization fund one of "the usual suspects" often used to fill in the budget holes.

The resident had initially mistaken Vozzella for the town's business manager, and said she objected to the 7.63 percent increase in the school budget, adding the schools should be adopting a zero-based form of budgeting and making more of an effort to inform residents of decisions that impact the town's financial future.

Selectman Doug Annino commented Vozzella displayed "a cavalier attitude about the reserves - that they can just be raided."

Selectmen had only recently congratulated town manager Bill Ross on the ongoing budget negotiations that precede the town meeting spring budget, saying Ross's efforts to set money aside for badly needed capital projects and for the reserve account were commendable in such tight economic times.

Board member George Dentino stated at the time he didn't want to use free cash or the stabilization account to balance the budget, saying those measures were reserved for emergencies only.

The schools remained $2.9 million away from a balanced budget last week, but the municipal side was on the verge of being balanced. Ross said he expected to see additional savings as meetings with department heads continued, and predicted the revenues and expenditures would match up on the municipal side well ahead of Town Meeting.

The school budget is projected at $41.4 million, a figure that is $433,280 in excess of what it will cost to keep services to students at the current level.

Mansfield's reserves stand at about $2 million, and its free cash at about $1.9 million, far below what is recommended by the state. The reserves are used both as an emergency fund and a tangible demonstration of the community's stability, one indicator that is used to calculate the town's bond rating every year.

In 2010, the town took money from reserves that included funds set aside for the rapidly accumulating "unfunded liability" account, to preserve high and middle school sports and extracurricular activities in the face of an overwhelming school budget shortfall. The unfunded liability for Mansfield - the benefits that will be owed to current and future town and school employees - is in the many millions, and the upcoming 2013 budget now includes $400,000 in an attempt to begin to re-feather that nest, a figure Ross said was only a drop in the bucket.

Budget meetings that include the finance committee, school committee, selectmen, and town officials continue; typically, budget shortfalls on the school side are whittled down very gradually and a number of times have only been resolved at town meeting.