The onset of summer brings a diminished pace of outwardly visible activity for Town Hall and the school system’s Central Office. It also heightens the work for the fiscal staff, as they look to close the books on FY25 and open them for FY26 that began on July 1. In particular, it is a snapshot of Granby’s finances on June 30, the close of the fiscal year. While the annual outside audit of the books and its portrayal of our financial condition as of that date are generally required to be filed with the state Office of Policy and Management for December 31, the preliminary snapshot for the fiscal yearend comes into focus in July.
Granby closed out the fiscal year in a very strong position, as we have done in recent years. The bond credit rating professionals look for us to maintain our unassigned reserves in the General Fund in the vicinity of 15 percent of the budget, which is where we are. We also have strengthened our capital and infrastructure reserves and have seen improvement in the joint self-insured health plan fund balance, as well as in the Other Post-Employment Benefits and pension trust funds. These components reflect the stock markets hitting high water marks of late.
While some of our positive status is attributable to good fortune and the stock market upswing, it is equally true that our steadily strengthening financial condition has been guided and at times driven by a board of finance that has, on a bipartisan and usually unanimous basis, worked in conjunction with the boards of selectmen and education to meet the needs of our town while paying heed to the cost to do so. For the most part, both operating boards/administrations have done their part in addressing needs while also returning money to the General Fund.
While at times some people may look to pressure the boards and administrations to spend every dime budgeted whether they need it or not, most recognize that in the big picture, money that is authorized to be spent but deemed not needed for the original intended purpose can be put to better use next month or next year for a different need that arises or that is scheduled in the future.
A prime example has been the volatile special needs education accounts that gyrate not just year-to-year but within the year. In recent years the BOE has had to cover cost overruns internally with lapsing dollars budgeted in other line items and at times had need for a special appropriation from the General Fund. This past year, for example, a diminished need and returning some students back in-house, freed up a significant amount of money. This allowed the board to prebuy in FY25 an item like French textbooks already budgeted for FY26. It also permitted the boards to act on a BOF-engineered transfer of $650K from the FY25 budget into the Small Capital infrastructure fund for carryover use this summer in meeting three timely needs—replacing the high school main gym bleachers (original to 1970), replacing the roof on the central office building behind Town Hall, and for upcoming safety and security work. Setting that transfer in motion allows those items to come off the listing of needs that we would have to handle anyway in upcoming budgets.
We on the board of finance believe that how we have fiscally positioned Granby, in conjunction with our partners on the BOS and BOE, puts the town in an excellent place as the boards consider the next major capital outlays that the town may choose to pursue. We expect to be well-prepared to manage taking on new debt service, as another existing bond is paid off next year. A major underlying theme is setting the stage to maintain a gradual slope to the ongoing change in mill rate over time as any new debt service is introduced into future budgets. At that juncture, and properly positioned and prepared, it is then up to the voters of Granby to decide.