Morning thunder

The shouting began early on Thursday morning, before I was even half way through my Venti Vanilla (non-fat) Latte. The 7:30 am meeting of the three Long Range Financial Planning subcommittees was certainly energetic, with some frank discussion about the concerns regarding the structure of override proposals and the challenges in reaching multi-board agreement on how to move forward.
The discussion was sucessful at getting a lot of concerns and emotions aired, but the only issue resolved was the agenda for the next subcommittees meeting on Wednesday, 20 Feb at 5:30 pm. The group is attempting to get the analyst from Moody's to call in to the meeting, to give their advice on how to avoid any further slip in the town's bond rating. The group will also review the latest data on revenue and expense forecasts for FY09, and will likely discuss more concrete concepts for how to structure the override and associated contingent appropriations.
The issue here is to decide on (1) the dollar amount for the override question, (2) how & when the override revenues would be used if approved, and (3) whether to adjust the current allocation of 'available' (non override) revenues to reduce the impact on some departments in the event the override is not approved.
When the Town and School budgets were presented to the three boards on 4 Feb, members from each of the boards suggested that we need to consider some changes to the overall budget allocations, to avoid the severe impacts to the school education and athletics programs that have been identified. The Andover High School has a fantastic athletic program, and I doubt anyone in Andover would be content to let the program be eliminated. Several town-side departments have also identified significant strain and shortfalls required to fit within the available revenue budgets. I am particularly concerned with the budget impacts within the Police and Fire-Rescue departments, which have been operating on minimally-staffed shifts and have insuffucient expense budgets to properly maintain basic protective equipment for the employees. Override or not, these are areas I believe we need to be concerned about.