Public Comment: Righting the Last Three Years’ Financial Improprieties  

The following public comment was presented at the joint meeting of the Amherst Town Council and the Amherst Finance Committe on February 10, 2025.

For the past three years a single, unelected council employee, the Town Manager, has presented to the council on May 1, budgets that claimed the anticipated municipal surplus for the fiscal year due to end on June 30 was unknown. Five-sixths into any fiscal year, a competent municipal fiscal manager knows with certainty, barring a catastrophe, whether their community will finish the fiscal year with a surplus or deficit, and its approximate size.
 
Those budgets concealed three consecutive $5+ million budget surpluses, and distorted the council’s annual budget guidelines and budgetary discussions. In those budgets the manager recommended destructive cuts to the Amherst and Regional Schools’ operating budgets approved by elected school committees. He supported his recommendations with statements about Amherst’s fiscal year situations that were false and misleading.

So, what are the appropriate corrective actions for this Finance Committee to recommend and this council to act on?

First, the council’s quarterly budget tracking reports and the manager’s annual May 1 budget should present potential budget deficits or surpluses by source or department. Some budget surpluses involve earnings from monies in municipal funds whose use is restricted by the nature of that municipal fund. The entire three-year, $16+ million budget surplus is not available for all uses. Second, both school operating budgets, by council vote, should be made whole immediately, e.g., restoring the FY24 $200K elementary cut and the multi-year $600K+ regional cuts. Those monies should then be included in the base upon which the coming fiscal year’s school budgets are calculated. An appropriation of less than $1 million is quite modest in light of the damage inflicted on school children and employees. Please also reject the proposition that compensation paid for school operating budget impacts be confined to school capital items, or that the paperwork necessary for the council to act must be authored by the manager himself. Wrong doers must not be allowed to dictate or control the terms of their organization’s required restitution.

Vincent O’Connor is a resident of Amherst’s District 1.