The budget for next year was passed during the Spring Annual Town Meeting, but not without a cloudy forecast for the years to follow.

The budget, at a total of $77,966,714, will fund schools, libraries, snow removal and a bargaining agreement with Dartmouth Police. But opening remarks from the Finance Committee at Tuesday's meeting warned citizens that while the town may operate smoothly this year, that may soon change.

Finance Committee member Doug Roscoe noted the positive strides the town has taken, like the solar contracts from the new solar farms and cost savings like lowering the cost of insurance for couples.

“These increased revenues and decreased costs have allowed us to fund things that were not possible in past years,” said Roscoe.

“As we look at our future financial situation, there are reasons to be cautiously concerned,” he added. “[The budget] is mainly good now, but this doesn’t mean we’ve fixed town finances.”

He said the committee has been looking at a variety of topics this past spring that he described as “clouds on the fiscal horizon.”

These “clouds” include a lack of new growth, a lack of new development plans in the near future, the flight of students from public schools to charter schools, expanded municipal responsibilities to transport homeless school children and an undetermined amount of state aid.

He added that many of the things that have placed Dartmouth in good financial standing this year — like growth in solar energy and moving numerous projects to enterprise funds — won’t be options going forward.

David Tatelbaum, Chairperson of the Finance Committee, said there may come a time in the next few years when the town “needs to decide if it wants to raise additional revenue or cut services and programs.”

Tatelbaum said this problem needs to be discussed sooner than later.

“The Finance Committee has proposed a development summit to focus on the best and most effective future development possibilities,” said Tatelbaum, adding that the “summit” will come in the form of public, televised meetings.

“Years of tough times have made us lean. Without growing revenue, we may be looking at some hard choices in the upcoming years,” he said.