Rochester facing difficult budget season

Feb 12, 2015

With town revenues flat, Rochester finance officials and Selectmen face a difficult task ahead to fund school budget increases.

“We are looking at budget requests on the municipal and the school side that our revenue projections cannot support,” Town Administrator Mike McCue said Wednesday night.

He told Selectmen that Rochester Memorial School’s proposed budget is approximately $166,000 more than last year. For the Old Rochester Regional District, the increase for the town’s share is approximately $265,000.

“We’re looking at a couple of difficult weeks and a couple of difficult months,” McCue said. “I don’t believe it’s an insurmountable issue…I make a commitment to this board to work diligently to come up with solutions.”

Several meetings between town department heads, the finance committee, school administrators and Selectmen in Marion and Mattapoisett are scheduled in the coming weeks.

“I can’t tell you at this point what we’re going to do, but we’ll figure it out,” McCue said.

Rochester’s proposed municipal budget saw few changes, except for increases related to utilities, salaries and other fixed costs. McCue said department heads were told to level fund budgets.