Town Avoids Deficit, Ends Fiscal Year in the Black

North Hampton will end the fiscal year in the black thanks to various shrewd budget decisions and cost-cutting moves that helped reverse what could’ve led to a sizable deficit.

Town Administrator Paul Apple said Monday, the first day of the new fiscal year, that North Hampton will have an “estimated surplus” of roughly $25,000 to $30,000. Apple said the number is “certainly closer than [he’d] like it to be," although he said it’s a significant improvement from what he and other officials projected not that long ago.

Overspending in overtime budgets — the greatest of which was in the North Hampton Fire Department budget — forced department heads to freeze overtime accounts and reallocate funds from various areas to cover these overages, effectively reigning in on overspending before it grew worse.

Officials thought they had the deficit under control in April, although they knew at best they'd only be able to avoid a deficit by a small figure. Apple projected a $75,000 surplus in April, and now just over two months later some of the continued issues related to under-budgeting town services have eaten more than half of that projected surplus.

Apple said the books for the previous fiscal year “technically don’t close until later this month” in order to process transactions in the final week of June, although he said he's confident North Hampton will avoid a deficit — even when taking into account the overtime needed to provide mutual aid assistance during a three-alarm in Portsmouth on Sunday.

More concrete numbers, including details about how budget lines were altered and relocated to cover the potential deficit, wouldn't be available until Wednesday at the earliest, according to Apple.