Friday, January 23, 2009

Cuts in state aid are announced

Some “relatively” good news…

Today, Governor Deval Patrick has announced cuts of state aid to cities and towns will total “only” $128 million as compared to earlier estimates as high as $500 million.












See full article on Boston.com.

Gov. Patrick also announced that the $128 million in cuts would not affect the state aid to cities and towns for public education but did not indicate how these latest cuts would be allocated town-by-town across the state.

With the new information and applying them equally based upon original state aid allocations ($128M/$5.3B = 2.4%), our "guess" for reduced state aid for Longmeadow is ~ $205,000. Add this number to the $200K shortfall in other town revenue highlighted during the Select Board meeting earlier this week, the town will likely need to cut ~ $400K in expenses for the FY2009 budget year.

It will be interesting to see how the Town Manager/ Select Board and School Committee address this revenue shortfall.

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