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Advisory Committee revises draft budget policy language; asks select board for more review time
Summary
Advisory members redrafted the town budget policy to clarify roles — especially advisory versus select board and finance team — and debated wording around whether advisory 'develops' or 'evaluates' budgets. Members agreed to further edits and to send a clean draft for select board review in September.
Members of the Town of Southborough Advisory Committee spent the bulk of their Aug. 5 meeting revising a draft budget policy, focusing on the roles of the select board, the town finance team and advisory in preparing and submitting a budget to town meeting. Chair (speaker 1) said the select board chair and vice chair agreed to give the advisory committee more time for edits; the committee intends to present a refined budget policy for select board review in September rather than the originally planned date.
Al (committee member) said he removed aspirational language and emphasized process clarity: "this is the process. The process documents should describe who's responsible and what they're supposed to do." Members debated the term 'develop' — some urging replacement with 'evaluate' or 'evaluate and modify as appropriate' to reflect the finance team’s role in assembling initial requests and advisory’s role in reviewing and submitting a recommended budget to town meeting.
