GREENFIELD — Mayor Roxann Wedegartner is cutting $370,000 from this year’s budget because the city isn’t going to receive the state aid it had expected, but she said it won’t mean any loss of jobs or deep cuts to services.
Wedegartner said the reduction to the fiscal year 2021 budget means the city’s total operating budget will be about $53.5 million instead of the nearly $53.9 million the City Council voted earlier this year. The council will have to vote to approve the changes.
Not all departments will have to make cuts.
“Those with the largest budgets, like the Department of Public Works and fire, will have to cut their budgets,” Wedegartner said.
Those cuts will include positions the departments haven’t hired but had planned to before word came from the state, she said.
“I also asked DPW, for instance, to get through the summer without hiring any seasonal help, or at least as few as possible, until we knew what the numbers would be, so that saved some money,” the mayor said. “We don’t have a hiring freeze, but many departments that had budgeted new hires have held off.
She said she didn’t want someone to be hired in July and fired in October.
“To my knowledge, no one that is employed by the city has been affected,” she added. “No one has lost their job.”
However, the budget cuts are not as severe as anticipated. Wedegartner said the city thought it would need to cut around $500,000.
“We’re running tight already, so this was a decent surprise,” she said.
The Fire Department will cut $46,000 to salaries and wages and $14,400 to expenses, reducing those budgets from $2,317,323 to $2,271,323 and $239,270 to $224,870, respectively. The DPW will cut $103,600 in salaries and wages and $16,600 in expenses, reducing its budgets from $1,663,485 to $1,559,885 and $603,515 to $586,915, respectively.
Other cuts include $20,500 to the Recreation Department budget, $16,300 to Central Maintenance’s budget, $50,000 to dispatch and $12,000 to the Energy Department’s budget.
Greenfield Director of Finance Elizabeth Gilman said the budget cut that City Council will vote on “absorbs the reductions” in the state’s Chapter 70 school aid, as well as the increase in School Choice and charter school assessments.
“The School Department will not receive a reduction in its appropriation, so therefore does not have to reduce the school budget,” Gilman said. “The school system is not listed as one of the departments being reduced. In fact, School Choice tuition the department receives directly will actually increase by $15,287.”
According to Gilman, the School Department does not pay the School Choice or charter school assessments.
“When you have a local school district, not a regional one, all state aid goes to the city, and the city gives an appropriation to the schools,” she said. “The city also pays all assessments.”
Therefore, the mayor has not reduced the School Department’s appropriation due to the budget reductions and increase in assessments.
“We’re in better shape than we expected,” Wedegartner said. “We didn’t have to make deep cuts, and that’s a good thing. Right now, we don’t anticipate any other cuts.”
Reach Anita Fritz at 413-772-9591 or afritz@recorder.com.