Wayland May Use Monthly Budgets Until It's Safe For Town Meeting

WAYLAND, MA — Wayland is preparing a way to move town finances into the fiscal 2021 budget year without holding the spring 2020 Town Meeting.

The meeting, originally scheduled for April 5, may not happen until the end of June. Town Moderator Dennis Berry has pushed back the meeting due to safety issues related to the coronavirus pandemic.

Wayland typically cements its annual budget at Town Meeting, and the new fiscal year begins on July 1. As a stopgap measure, the town has prepared 1/12 estimated budgets for each month until Town Meeting can be held, which may not be for months.

Wayland is estimating that the town will have a $375,000 shortfall in the fiscal 2021 budget due to lower revenue from motor vehicle excise tax, meal tax, and building permits. Those revenue sources have been "significantly affected" by Gov. Charlie Baker's stay-at-home order, Town Administrator Louise Miller told the Board of Selectmen last week. But Wayland doesn't heavily depend on local revenue — it accounts for about $5 million of the town's $80 million budget.

Many cities and towns across Massachusetts are also bracing for a cut in state aid, but Miller said Wayland is not making any predictions about those losses. State lawmakers have yet to produce a fiscal 2021 budget, and some estimates place the coronavirus-induced state shortfall at between $6 and $8 billion.

About 10 percent of Wayland's annual revenue comes from the state, although two-thirds of that is Chapter 70 education funding, which Miller said likely won't be cut locally.

The postponed Town Meeting was supposed to begin on May 29, but a new date has not been named.

"Precisely when the moderator along with the boards and authorities involved can determine that a meeting with un-curtailed attendance allowing for Wayland’s vigorous debate and sufficient safety precautions in place, is not certain," Berry and Board of Selectmen Chair Cherry Karlson wrote in a letter to residents recently. "It could well be sometime in the early fall."