Two weeks after the general override proposal failed, Mayor Fuller announced her plan to help fill the expected budget gaps. The plan consists of the use of FY2022 Free Cash in a “financially responsible way,” changing the pension funding plan (via a request made yesterday to the Retirement Board) and absorbing several NPS budget items through a one-year grant and into the City’s municipal budget. According to the Mayor’s announcement, the plan will increase the FY2024 NPS budget by $9.772 million and provide funding for the Horace Mann addition/renovation project — two of the items that would have been covered by the override if approved.
The Mayor’s plan includes two requests submitted to the City Council for approval:
- The first is a request to use $10 million in Free Cash and $2.5 million in snow/ice reserves and apply it to the Lincoln-Eliot School Construction Project, thereby reducing the bonding needed to fund the project and lowering the annual debt service freeing up $600K per year. The freed-up funds not needed for debt service would be applied to NPS’s annual budget, increasing the annual increase from 3.5% to 3.73%, which for the FY2024 budget equals an increase of $9.772M to help reduce cuts to teachers and staff.
- The second proposal is to use $1.4 million in FY2022 Free Cash to provide a “bridge grant” to NPS to be used toward the expected significant increase in student out-of-district costs as a result of a state-imposed increase for private special-education tuition. According to the Mayor, “NPS has a one-year funding gap as the state will provide financial relief from these rate increases the following year.”
The City will also absorb the cost of the INTERFACE referral service program, which provides mental health and wellness referral service and will be “100% funded within the City’s Health and Human Services” Department’s FY2024 budget.
In addition, as reported in Fig City News, the Mayor, CFO Maureen Lemieux, City Council President and Ward 2 City Councilor Susan Albright, and Ward 2 School Committee Member Chris Brezski paid a visit to the City’s Retirement Board. According to the Mayor’s announcement, she requested the Retirement Board to consider extending the City’s pension funding schedule, currently to be fully funded by 2030, instead to 2031. This revised funding schedule would free up the City’s bonding capacity and enable the City to move forward with the Horace Mann Elementary school addition and renovation project.
