Dec 16, 2019

School Committee Votes for FY21 Allocation of $72.9M

The School Committee met and reviewed the first draft of their FY21 budget. The allocation proposal in this budget is $72.9 million dollars.

Jan 6, 2020

Town Administrator Presents Preliminary Budget

Town Administrator Melissa Malone presented revenue forecasts and overview of the Preliminary budget for FY21. In this meeting the revenue projection presented was $168 million, with $71.2 million allocated to NPS.

Mar 9, 2020

School Committee Votes on Revised Budget

Facing a $1.7 million difference between the Preliminary School Committee budget and the Town Administrator's proposal, the School Committee voted to a new budget of $71.5 million. They were able to reduce the allocation proposal by utilizing an additional $500K of funds from the circuit breaker revolving account, reduce the technology budget by $100K, adding additional revenue by adding two new preschool classrooms ($212K) and spending less on ASAP ($150K).

May 4, 2020

School Committee Presents Potential Impacts

Dr. Nolin presented to the School Committee the possible consequences of a large reduction to the school's allocation from the town. Revisiting union contracts, elimination of entire programs and closing an elementary school were all options for the School Committee to consider in order to decrease the NPS Allocation by $4.4 million dollars.

May 11, 2020

Town Administrator Update Revenue Projections and Budget Allocation

Town Administrator Melissa Malone presented the projected revenue for FY21 at $160.2 million (which includes $2.3 million in Stabilization Funds). This represents a $6.4 million decrease from FY20 and a $8.4 million decrease from January FY21 budget. In her presentation Ms. Malone proposed the NPS allocation at $66.8 million and the Municipal allocation at $38.1. This represented a $4.4 million in cuts from January for NPS and $400K in cuts to Municipal from January.

Jun 4, 2020

School Committee Approves New Budget of $69M

The School Committee reduced their budget by eliminating most new hires from their original list in January and not rehiring some positions left vacant by retirements.  Negotiations are in process with the paraprofessionals, teachers and administrative assistant unions for the remaining reductions needed to reduce the school budget to $69 million. 

Jun 8, 2020

Town Administrator Presents Amended Preliminary Budget

Town Administrator presented the amended budget which included an allocation of $67.1 million for NPS and $38 million for Municipal. This still leaves ~$2M gap between what was approved by school committee and what was allocated by the TA.

Jun 15, 2020

Town Administrator takes question on June 8th Amended Budget

Town Administrator opened with remarks on the severity of the economic crisis and then proceeded to answer questions received in advance and from the BOS. BOS affirmed that it is the Town Adminsitrator’s role to recommend to Town Meeting what she thinks is best for the town, but they expressed concerns about the cuts chosen and multiple members said they could not support current proposal.

Jun 15, 2020

School Committee Votes to Use $2M to Pre-Pay SPED Tuition

The School Committee confirmed that the teacher, paraprofessionals and administrative assistants agreed to a 0% cost of living increase for FY21. Even with this, there is a $2M gap. SC voted to prepay 3 months of out of district special education tuition fees with monies saved during the spring Covid closures. This will save on costs for next year in the event that $67M is the final allocation.

Jun 16, 2020

Happening Now: Finance Committee and Subcommittee Meetings

Department heads are meeting with the Finance Committee Members to go through the amended budgets.  Consider, attending one of the meetings posted here to learn about these budgets. PNF will be attending and asking questions at these meetings to determine what cuts have been made, what areas of savings still exist so that we can inform the public!