In 2022, Town Meeting approved (after a very long conversation) nearly half a million dollars to redo the floor of the band and chorus rooms at the high school. After some thought, said Eric Conti a year later, he started thinking better of the request. Amid all the discussion about replacing school buildings in Burlington, and considering the high school had topped the priority list for years, Conti thought it best to use those $500,000 for a feasibility study to determine the best course of action for rebuilding or renovating Burlington High.
A year ago, the Select Board requested $20,000 in funding via a Capital Warrant Article for training in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for FY24; these funds have not been used and likely won’t be in the 2024 fiscal year.
Assistant Town Administrator John Danizio this week at Town Meeting said The Fire Department might not need all the overtime pay outlined in the Department’s budget.
These are three different examples, representing three different scenarios of Town-Meeting-Approved funding not going toward its intended purpose. But if that happens, then where does that unused money from the budget go?
- Scenario 1: Reappropriation (must be approved by Town Meeting): The School Department ultimately decided to defer the music room floor project and defer the funds to a $1.5 million feasibility study (Articles 29 and 30). In order to divert the funding, though, they had to first request reallocation from Town Meeting.
- Scenario 2: Continued allocation or return of funds (Must be approved by Town Meeting): The Select Board might decide what they’re going to do with the $20k in DEI Training money this July; or they might decide they won’t use the money at all. In the case of a Capital Warrant Article, the funds remain allocated until such time as the requesting party says they no longer need them. If that happens, the money is returned to the town.
- Scenario 3: Unused budget funds go into Free Cash: If the Fire Department doesn’t pay out all the overtime they’ve budgeted for, the excess unencumbered funds, if not used to fund another line item in the same department’s budget, go into Free Cash, which is a reserve fund from which we might choose to do things like pay for future Capital Warrant Articles (see Articles 7-01 through 7-30) or make a down payment or an early payment for a large bond.
Whichever scenario the money falls into, unused money from the budget can’t go toward funding anything else without approval from Town Meeting.
Finally, and this doesn’t relate specifically to unspent funds, but there are various payments that go through free cash to pay bills for the next year. These funds first go to free cash, then are transferred to stabilization funds, and then bills are paid from those stabilization funds.
For more information about the specifics of Burlington’s budget for the coming fiscal year, check out our budget overview and deep dive.
