Two months ago, Plymouth Town Council adopted a budget, a spending plan for the next 12 months, with general spending income and expenses at $3.4 million.
A few weeks later, in July, council unanimously approved spending $1.56 million on a new equipment truck for the fire department. The town will borrow that money, repaying the loan over time.
Last week, when I went in for the August 11 council meeting, clerk and finance officer Dorenda Wallace handed me a pack of four budget amendments — changes they need to make to the budget, presumably because staff wasan’t aware of the needs when they prepared the budget.
Three of the amendments involve taking money from fund balance (the town’s savings account).
We now need $70,000 for sludge blowers for the wastewater treatment plant, $300,000 for street paving and $200,000 for a back-up garbage truck (the fourth amendment moves money from one line item to another in the fire department).
That’s $570,000 potentially coming out of savings for items they should have known about, and council and the public should have been told about, during the budget process.
I don’t fault the town for needing to take money out of savings for necessary projects, but this feels like bait-and-switch.
There has been talk of all three, so they should have been budgeted. At this rate, council could blow through fund balance pretty quickly, and that’s not in anybody’s best interest.