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Buckfield to ask voters to cover $58,963 public-safety overage
Summary
A Nov. 4 warrant article asks voters to appropriate $58,963.03 from the undesignated fund balance to cover FY24–25 public-safety over-expenditures tied to an apparatus repair and rescue staffing overtime and training.
The Town of Buckfield will ask voters on Nov. 4 to approve appropriating $58,963.03 from the undesignated fund balance to cover a public-safety over-expenditure for fiscal year 2024–25.
Town manager Cam said the overage resulted from an “unanticipated apparatus repair and increased personnel costs tied to overtime and training,” and that hiring additional staff to reduce overtime produced short-term overlap costs during onboarding and certification.
The warrant materials and the treasurer’s statements presented at the Oct. 21 special meeting break the overage down by unit: fire showed roughly $10,000 overdrawn, while rescue accounted for about $53,000 of the shortfall, with smaller offsets from animal welfare, street lights and emergency management bringing the net request to $58,963.03. Cam told residents a quarterly financial statement posted to the town website contains the line-item details.
Residents asked why the shortfall was not flagged earlier; one said monthly statements would have shown the problem sooner. Cam and board members said department heads and staff meet regularly and that the timing of training, turnover and payroll caused the overspend to materialize later in the fiscal year.
The treasurer said the town’s overall FY24–25 budget ended about $1,243 in the red across all departments, and that approving the requested appropriation would leave the town’s audit without a negative finding for the public-safety accounts. If voters reject the appropriation, Cam warned, the auditor would report the overdrawn balance in the audit documents.
The article is a referendum question only; the select board did not vote to appropriate the funds at the Oct. 21 meeting and instead placed the item on the Nov. 4 ballot for voter decision.
Clarifying details discussed at the meeting included the town’s undesignated fund balance (treasurer referenced figures in the $1.7 million range in discussion), auditors’ guidance that a fund-balance target around $250,000–$300,000 is comfortable, and that rescue bills some calls to insurance and self-pay accounts as a revenue source to offset operations. The town manager said he will post quarterly reports and revenue breakdowns for public review.
