(Greenfield, MA) Greenfield Mayor Roxann Wedegartner has submitted her fiscal year 2024 $61.6 million budget proposal to the City Council, a 6.5% increase over the current year’s operating budget.
“Because we were obligated by law to present a balanced budget, this budget already contains significant reductions from the funding requests submitted by City departments last fall. The proposed increase over the current budget is driven largely by contractual wage and salary obligations, the need to retain high quality department heads and supervisory staff, and increased costs for certain contracted services,” said Mayor Wedegartner. “We focused on a shared common purpose of providing a balanced City budget that realistically maintains services and programs while confronting pressures that are beyond our control, ranging from stubborn inflation to reduced enrollment in Greenfield Public Schools, which caused a reduction in overall state aid to schools. State aid to the City was also reduced, or stayed static in some cases.”
Greenfield Public School enrollment declined by 158 students this year and is expected to continue declining in the coming years, resulting in less state funding for the district. The Mayor has reduced the $23.15 million school budget proposed by Superintendent Christine DeBarge to $21.6 million, a roughly 3% increase over the current year. The Superintendent will be discussing the school budget with the City Council Ways and Means Committee on April 24th.
The proposed Fire Department budget is $3.24 million, a 10.14% increase over the current year and the proposed Police Department budget has increased 11.25% from the current year to $3.81 million.
“This is another tough budget year. The decline in school enrollment and rising costs for goods and services along with rising costs in health insurance for our employees and retirees are contributing factors in this budget. Nevertheless, I submit this spending plan with some sense of optimism,” added Mayor Wedegartner. “Although off to a slow start, local receipts continue to rebound from the lows of the pandemic, we have been able to secure millions in state grants to plan for the future, and by this time next year we will have opened a new library, fire station and skate park—all while continuing to prepare for the upcoming downtown revitalization project.”
More information on the budget is available here.