The Southborough Select Board on Jan. 6 discussed an early draft of the town's revised capital and operating budget and approved a minor reclassification of American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds.

Speaker 7, the presenter for the budget recap, emphasized the draft is preliminary and said the town is "in the negative right now," noting recent upward adjustments largely in capital spending and school budgets. He said estimated appropriations include nearly $2.8 million in capital requests and that the fiscal picture had changed in the days before the meeting as departments updated submissions.

Board members asked for more detailed comparisons to fiscal 2025 actual non-salary expenditures and suggested inviting additional departmental presenters to a budget review on Saturday, Jan. 24. Speaker 2 proposed adding library and IT to the Jan. 24 review; Speaker 4 recommended providing a separate spreadsheet that directly compares FY25 actuals to FY27 proposed amounts to make differences easier to spot. Speaker 7 said supporting documents and budget files could be placed on OneDrive for board review.

On ARPA reclassification, Speaker 2 moved to reduce the Peninsula Trail upgrades authorization under ARPA from $99,340.05 to $97,803.81 and increase the fire equipment authorization under ARPA from $30,803.85 to $32,340.09. Speaker 3 seconded and the motion carried by voice vote; Speaker 11 confirmed the packet contained a prior memo with an 85-cent discrepancy and that the numbers had been corrected. The transcript does not show a roll-call vote for this motion.

The board discussed whether to apply training increases as a blanket across departments or evaluate requests department-by-department; training accounts for roughly $36,000 of the FY25-to-FY27 non-salary increase, according to the transcript.

Afterward, the board moved to enter executive session to discuss strategy related to collective bargaining with police and DPW unions and to discuss personnel matters; a roll-call was taken in executive session.