{"id":96185,"date":"2024-04-25T14:11:07","date_gmt":"2024-04-25T14:11:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thelandmark.com\/?p=96185"},"modified":"2024-04-25T14:11:07","modified_gmt":"2024-04-25T14:11:07","slug":"towns-see-initial-drop-in-state-aid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/2024\/04\/25\/towns-see-initial-drop-in-state-aid\/","title":{"rendered":"Towns see initial drop in state aid"},"content":{"rendered":"
By Ken Cleveland<\/em>
\nLandmark Correspondent<\/em><\/div>\n

It is still the beginning of a long process, but state aid figures show drops in town aid while the school district managed a sizeable gain, if the newest state budget figures hold up.<\/p>\n

The House Ways and Means committee recently released its budget to the full House, which shows differences from Gov. Maura Healey\u2019s budget.<\/p>\n

The impacts for towns include increases in Chapter 70 education aid to school districts. But that was balanced by reductions in the unrestricted aid that goes to communities.<\/p>\n

Towns have largely figured their budgets as they head toward the annual town meetings, usually basing budgets on the the state aid in the budget released by the governor.<\/p>\n

A common complaint is that towns do not get the final aid figures until late in the budget process; some years those figures are approved by the Legislature and governor after budgets have been voted at town meetings, requiring adjustments after the fact.<\/p>\n

With many communities are feeling pressure to keep services in strained budgets as costs rise, aid cuts can have outsize impacts.<\/p>\n

The result in the House budget will potentially change as the budget moves through the full House, then on to the Senate before a conference committee and final votes and ultimately to the governor\u2019s desk.<\/p>\n

But the House figures tend to be a good idea of where the final figures may come out at the end of the process.<\/p>\n

For the Wachusett district towns, the net is a gain of $399,300.<\/p>\n

But the rising tide did not lift all boats.<\/p>\n

The Wachusett Regional School District gained $503,718 in the new budget, with state aid rising to $36,558,963; Holden also gained a smidgen of school aid, with a $4 increase in its aid budget, rising to $14,521, up from $14,517 in the governor\u2019s proposed budget.<\/p>\n

Sterling also had Chapter 70 state aid, steady at $14,521. The other towns \u2014 Paxton, Princeton and Rutland \u2014 had none.<\/p>\n

But in unrestricted town aid, the numbers went down.<\/p>\n

Holden had the largest drop. Its $2,308,473 in aid was down $45,712 in the House budget.<\/p>\n

Paxton saw its figure drop to $653,372, down $12,938.<\/p>\n

In Princeton the $357,494 was a reduction of $7,079.<\/p>\n

Rutland, which gets a large state aid package, $1,116,941, lost $22,117 from the initial budget.<\/p>\n

Sterling\u2019s $837,088 was down $16,576.<\/p>\n

The total drop in unrestricted aid for the five Wachusett towns from the governor’s budget to the House budget was $104,422.<\/p>\n

The towns are struggling with budgets, and the final numbers are not likely to come until after voters approve town budgets at the town meetings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ken Cleveland Landmark Correspondent It is still the beginning of a long process, but state aid figures show drops in town aid while the school district managed a sizeable gain, if the newest state budget figures hold up. The House Ways and Means committee recently released its budget to the full House, which shows […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":96545,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_gspb_post_css":"","_sitemap_exclude":false,"_sitemap_priority":"","_sitemap_frequency":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96185\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}