No Need For School Consolidation? $4 Million Surplus by 2026?

Update. I received feedback on my initial numbers. So, I'm adjusting this post at the top of the post. And leaving the original below that.

An update. I got feedback on my numbers. I was looking at Gross numbers instead of net for state aid. And adjusted the other financing. So, instead of a $20 million surplus over two years it's $4 Million over two years. Still, I think that's a lot better than the $1.5 Million we had in the FY2025 budget.

Again, it would be great to get feedback on the numbers, but if these more realistic figures are good, it means we are looking at potentially a surplus or square until 2028. I think the school committee could still argue the finances aren't good, we will have extra debt from the court case money. But our debt was going down as a proportion of our overall budget anyway. So hopefully not too much of an impact.

And because we are doing so well in 2024. Our numbers for 2025 might be even better.

I do think that if these numbers are better, there is less of an argument that we need to close schools. What's important to me is that we need better numbers on the budget for the next four years before we go ahead with the decision about closing schools.


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Does Braintree now project to have a $20 Million surplus by FY2026?

In the 2025 budget we had the following projections for revenue.

The table above projects FY25 General Fund budget balances for fiscal years 2025 through 2028 with the addition of the $8 million in Override proceeds beginning in FY25. Page 13 Braintree Budget FY2025

The table above projects FY25 General Fund budget balances for fiscal years 2025 through 2028
with the addition of the $8 million in Override proceeds beginning in FY25. By the end of FY2028 we were showing a budget deficit of $1.5 Million. The justification for consolidation of schools.

We are already seeing differences… between the estimated budget of April 2024, and revenue we have received in 2024 and will in 2025, according to the state website data. Unless I’m wrong somewhere.

Instead of neutral on the balance, and a a small surplus of $1.5 Million into FY2025, we are seeing a projected budget surplus of $6 million for FY2024 and $14 million for FY2025.

The level of underestimation is quite dramatic.

We appear to have received an additional $5 million in state funding. If it hadn’t been for that very large amount of money from the state, I think the increases, and one decrease were quite reasonable. We were lucky.

Now I know we have the court settlement, and if we had to pay out $14.9 million for the Frederick Weichel case, and we have recovered $3 million already from insurance, which leaves us with $12 Million to pay out. That means we still have a projection of at least $6 million over the next two years.

But doesn’t this rapid turnaround, with potentially an even bigger surplus in FY2025 budget mean things aren’t so dire. And if that’s the case we don’t really need to close Highlands and Liberty, but instead can think about rebuilding schools, financing a new Fire House HQ and putting more money into infrastructure.

This is good news all around I think. Unless you can show me I'm wrong in my figures. I pulled everything from the Braintree April FY2025 Budget and the Department of Revenue state website.

But if the argument by the school committee is that we have a projected budget gap coming up in FY2026 and FY2027, when we have an extra $20 million we hadn't projected. That surplus can easily cover the $2 million budget deficit for those two years, and then the court case.

If the whole argument was, we need to cut now to protect ourselves for tomorrow. Haven't we succeeded in doing that in two years? 2023 and 2024? I looked at the free cash situation in January 2024 and it looked really good. We were within the state regulated amounts of free cash 3-7%. Much better than Quincy I would note. Though make no mistake without the state aid we'd still have needed an override amount of around $3 million or $4 million. And in FY2025 the revenue projections at an additional $9 million look really good.

Check my numbers folks, but this is great news all around. Let's see what the Council and School Committee tell us next.