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The Sudbury Finance Committee welcomed several guests on Monday, November 18. Their first guest was a representative from the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) to discuss the ins and outs of the Circuit Breaker special education reimbursement program. Following that, Ben Carmel and Mara Huston presented a financial overview of the Park and Recreation department on behalf of the Park and Recreation Commission. There was also a robust discussion about the Town’s capital plan. Here are the key takeaways from each:
Circuit Breaker
- The DESE representative walked through the history of the Circuit Breaker program and some finer details on how it works. Circuit Breaker is a State reimbursement program for high-cost special education services that are provided to students in a given district.
- Co-chair Mike Joachim, who has a talent for making complex municipal finance concepts easy to grok for the public, explained that Sudbury Public Schools and Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School take different approaches in the way they manage Circuit Breaker funds from the state. He wanted to understand what was appropriate, typical or atypical. The exchange was a highlight of the discussion and quite informative. (33:00)
- The representative didn’t voice a preference for one approach over the other in the meeting, and he empathized with school districts who were just trying to get the most out of their resources. But he did repeatedly emphasize that districts should be transparent with local officials and residents about how they’re managing the funds.
- If this all sounds familiar – the way SPS manages State education funding has been an ongoing conversation since the Sudbury Public Schools override discussions a couple years back, followed by significant confusion surrounding an article at Special Town Meeting in October 2023. More recently, Members of the Select Board were not satisfied with incomplete information about how the school district was funding an HVAC project.
Park and Recreation
- Two members of the Park and Recreation Commission, Chair Ben Carmel and member Mara Huston, presented the financials of the Park and Recreation department.
- This is part of an ongoing conversation about the future funding of the department. Town Manager Sheehan has previously indicated that he would like to gradually shift the department over to a self-funding model.
- There was not much new information presented or discussed, but it was notable that some members of the Finance Committee seemed amenable to assisting the Park and Recreation Commission in exploring ways to get stronger financial support for their operations. (1:02:00)
5 Year Capital Plan
- The committee reviewed the preliminary draft of the 5-year capital plan. They weren’t pleased with the level of detail in the draft, and some members wanted to see more dynamic modeling for various revenue scenarios. (1:47:30)
- Combined Facility Director Sandra Duran joined the meeting to explain that the Town is completing its facility condition assessment and they are inputting data into a new system that will spit out scenarios on a 20 year horizon. That work won’t be ready for near-term conversations because one of the cost centers needed considerably more time to finalize their portion of the assessment according to Duran.
- Duran pointed out that the capital plan they have for this budget cycle is based on the priority items that have already emerged in the facility condition assessment process.
- Duran explained that roofs are a major priority right now. Member Poch interjected and questioned why the Town was spending money on Nixon elementary school. Duran responded: “Why are we spending money on Nixon? Because Nixon is one of our oldest roofs and it is leaking. Similar to Haynes, it’s end of life. Haynes is leaking worse, even though its younger.” (2:04:49)