Council Taking A Closer Look at Town Budget

Town officials say new monthly financial reports from department heads and a 10-year review of expenses will make for a smoother process as budget season heats up this fall.

"What's been shared with the council already is by department, by salary, by area each and every piece of how the town operates so that we're not looking at it as we're getting budget books in November," Town Council Chairman John Farrell said at the board's meeting Monday. "We're starting to look at it now and prepare for it."

Over the summer, Acting Town Manager William Hart implemented a new program asking department heads to take a look at how their monthly expenditures stack up with the money allocated in the budget.

Hart, who is also the town's police chief, took over for former Town Manager David Caron, who stepped down in June.

"The primary goal is to integrate the department of finance and administration in the town of Londonderry into the various departments that they serve," said Hart in an interview Tuesday. "I think we've really made some strides in doing that over the past couple months."

Under the new program, Hart said each department head is given a line-by-line outline of monthly spending and is asked to give some explanation and context to any places where spending was more than 5 percent higher or 20 percent lower than the budgeted amount.

The Leach Library Trustees initially objected to the request, citing the fact that trustees already perform monthly financial reviews and that the library is not considered a town department, according to minutes of last week's library trustees meeting. While the library receives taxpayer money through the annual budget, the Town Council is not allowed to direct library trustees in how that money is spent.

At last week's meeting, trustees voted to comply with the request for monthly financial explanations in the "spirit of cooperation and harmony," according to the minutes.

In addition to the monthly reports, Farrell said that councilors have also asked for a 10-year look back at town expenses since 2003. He said the information about employee wages, pensions, benefits and other costs would be laid out in "layman's terms."

"For the first time in many years, you won't hear things like, 'We're reducing the budget by 2 percent and 2 percent across the board,'" he said Monday. "We're going to look at each department and see what the needs of those departments are and try to work with the Budget Committee to develop a real budget that faces the real needs of the community."

The preliminary budget proposal will be presented to the Town Council at a public meeting on Nov. 5, with a Saturday budget workshop scheduled for Nov. 17.

From there, the budget will be the subject of several workshop meetings with the Town Council and Budget Committee through November and December. The final budget proposal is scheduled for adoption by councilors on Jan. 15, ahead of February's deliberative session.