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Budget committee reviews GenAI-derived town comparison, reserve funds and pauses contractor requests pending audit
Summary
Clerk Steven Borne presented a town/school budget comparison created using GenAI and public sources and explained normalization methods; members discussed reserve funds (noting cemetery reserves account for about half of roughly $10M) and agreed not to submit requests to the MRI contractor until the audit is finished.
The Rye Budget Committee on June 4 reviewed a town and school budget comparison presented by Clerk Steven Borne and discussed reserve-fund grouping and contractor requests.
Borne said the comparison document covering Rye, Greenland and North Hampton was created using GenAI along with the Town MS-737 and School MS-27 documents and other public sources such as population and assessment data. He explained that normalizing budget line items by number of homes or by population can help compare certain categories, but is not appropriate for all line items. A request to form a subcommittee to expand the analysis failed for lack of support; Borne said he will continue to seek whether the included towns will discuss the approach.
Committee members reviewed reserve fund data and heard that cemetery reserve accounts make up about one-half of the roughly $10 million in reserves. The committee directed staff to develop potential groupings of similar warrant/reserve accounts for presentation to voters, including end-of-year balances, target fund amounts and proposed 2027 contributions, and to clarify rules about when funds should be used.
Members also agreed not to submit requests to the MRI contractor until the town audit is complete. Member Kate Dumas agreed to work with Steven Borne on the next steps, possibly with support from RBVD representative Frank Drake.
During public comment, Joe Cummins urged that funds be allocated to train town employees and board/committee members on RSA 91-A (the state Right-to-Know law), and Cindy Carter voiced support for additional RSA 91-A training.
