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Finance committee recommends routine line items and approves multiple department budgets
Summary
At a public hearing the Bellingham finance committee voted to recommend a slate of routine small-dollar items and recommended budget amounts across multiple departments, including public building maintenance, library and council on aging; staff will return with clarifications on personnel hours and revolving-fund accounting.
The Bellingham Finance Committee met in public and recommended funding for a series of municipal line items and departmental budgets.
Committee members moved to bundle roughly 20 routine items under $60,000 into a single recommendation after staff described them as “necessary for the town” and “nothing contentious” (committee discussion). The committee then recommended the public building maintenance budget at $446,337 and approved recommendation votes for the town clerk, veterans benefits, elections, library, human resources, council on aging, board of health and contracted legal services.
Staff told the committee that the building maintenance budget is largely level-funded with modest reductions in some professional services and janitorial supplies based on FY25 actual spending. The committee clarified that utility lines in this municipal budget do not include school buildings, which are budgeted separately in the school budget.
Library leaders sought a $58,000 increase tied to succession planning and new positions; staff said state formula grants and an offset of $48,336 in state aid would cover part of the net impact.
The Council on Aging budget was recommended at $353,377 and includes increased van service hours and part-time kitchen staff funded in part from a revolving fund that offsets wages for cooks and dishwashers. Staff said the revolving fund is intended to be sustainable and that the finance office is monitoring trends.
Committee members asked staff to confirm department-head hours and benefit eligibility for building maintenance (Ron is noted as the department head) and to investigate whether Board of Health inspection fees that exceed the $50,000 annual expenditure cap should be transferred into the general fund or otherwise handled—staff said they would research and the town auditor may flag the matter at year-end.
What happens next: capital and DPW items (including standpipe improvements and two police vehicle requests) were scheduled for the next meeting; staff will follow up on benefit-eligibility and revolving-fund accounting questions before finalizing warrant recommendations.
