NORTHFIELD — The majority of Northfield’s proposed $7.8 million fiscal year 2017 budget will be spent on education.
Northfield Town Administrator Brian Noble presented next year’s proposed omnibus budget earlier this week at the Selectboard meeting using a color-coded pie chart to represent the amount allocated by categories.
Education amounted to 63 percent — about $4.9 million — of the town’s operating budget, which doesn’t include special town meeting articles or capital expenditures. The Franklin County Technical School FY17 assessment spiked drastically while the Pioneer Valley Regional School District followed with a slight increase.
“The biggest jump — particularly for this year — is the Franklin County Technical School, which jumped $100,000,” Noble said. “In 2015, it was approximately $400,000, and now here in 2017 it’s over $600,000, which represents a tremendous increase of the number of students going from Northfield to the tech school.”
Noble said the budget is relatively flat and level-serviced. It increased by .01 percent over the current year, solely because the town paid off Pioneer’s debt service of $242,000. Out of the remaining 37 percent of the operating budget, public works accounts for 11 percent, general government accounts for 9 percent, public safety accounts for 7 percent, town employee benefits account for 6 percent while human services and culture and recreation each account for 2 percent.
“I think this budget is very conservative, well thought out and has a strong foundation,” he said. “I believe it’s dependable, comprehensive and justified.”
The finance committee must approve the budget before it’s presented to the voters at the annual town meeting on May 2 at 7 p.m. in the Pioneer Valley Regional School. Noble began preparing the town budget with the Finance Committee and the Selectboard in November and plans to finalize all materials in April to give voters plenty of time to understand each article. Noble and other town officials want to ensure residents are fully briefed about every topic that may come up at the meeting and plans to include a written summary of each warrant article rather than a verbal explanation from the moderator with hopes that the change will make the process smoother.
“The goal is to produce a warrant for town meeting and we want it out and published and ready to go so people are educated for the town meeting and have had ample opportunity to see it and clarify any questions if they don’t understand,” he said.
Click on the town meeting tab on the home page of the Northfield website at www.northfieldma.gov to view the budget presentation and other annual town meeting materials.