Preliminary town budget begins taking shape months before deadline
Just over half of the town's budget goes toward the schools. Source: Dartmouth Community Media
The majority of the town's revenue comes from property taxes.
Several expenses are set and unavoidable.
Just over half of the town's budget goes toward the schools. Source: Dartmouth Community Media
The majority of the town's revenue comes from property taxes.
Several expenses are set and unavoidable.
After various meetings and collaboration with department heads, a preliminary version of the town's Fiscal Year 2027 budget is already coming into fruition.
"We're about a month ahead of where we were last year in the budget process," said Town Administrator Cody Haddad. "The Finance Committee has already begun reviewing departmental budgets."
Currently, the total revenue projection for the upcoming fiscal year is $113,199,892.
There are five primary ways the town gets revenue: property taxes, state aid, local receipts, overhead and indirect costs, and other funds that may be available.
Of these five categories, the largest — or 71% — comes from property taxes. This is revenue that’s collected from both residential and commercial property taxes and equals about $80 million.
Carreiro said the amount of state aid isn’t currently known but is conservatively estimated to be $16,452,904 based on the amount of aid the town has previously received.
"The reason why we flatline that 16.4 million is just because we don't want to make these numbers fictitious to the point where we think we're going to bring 16.8," he said.
Haddad noted that when enterprise funds are taken into account, the town’s total revenue would be closer to $130 million.
The majority of Dartmouth's expenses fall under schools, public safety, public works, community services, general government, debt benefits and insurance.
Over half of all expenses, or 57%, go toward the schools, followed by 10% to public safety. Only 1% of expenses go toward insurance.
Within the budget are also some fixed costs that Dartmouth doesn’t have control over, said Gary Carreiro, the director of budget and finance.
This includes debt service, property and liability insurance, health and life insurance, and pension and retirement.
“There are costs in the budget that the town has no control over,” Carreiro said. “These are either mandates that come down from the state, pension assessments and so on and so forth.”
In total, these fixed costs add up to $19,474,083.
Carreiro noted that these are expenses that the town has no choice but to pay.
The deadline to submit the paperwork to the town clerk for a finalized Fiscal Year 2027 budget is May 12. It will then be voted on at Town Meeting on Tuesday, June 2 and would go into effect on Wednesday, July 1 if approved.
