AMESBURY — Roughly 24 hours after harsh reductions were forecasted for Amesbury Public Schools, the overall budget took up most of Tuesday’s City Council meeting.
“We are doing our best with what we have to maintain high quality services for both our city and schools, season schools , residents, businesses and visitors,” Mayor Kassandra Gove said during a financial presentation.
Discussing the city’s budget goals headed into fiscal 2026, Gove said her office always takes a “no stone unturned approach” to finding other revenue sources.
“Some of what we have done in recent years with your help and collaboration is to revisit fees that had not been updated in a long time – including the treasurer’s office, the clerk’s office,” Gove said.
Looking to the future, Gove spoke about new growth, beginning with how the city faired last year. She said while the city predicted and budgeted for $500,000, they actually saw $670,000 in new growth.
“We have a revenue forecasting group that has been meeting about quarterly, looking at the projects that we have coming, which is just so much. There’s so many more projects in the queue for us than we typically see,” Gove said.
For fiscal 2026, she said they are projecting $900,000 in new growth.
“We have a year behind us from our revenue forecasting group, and we’re feeling pretty confident in that number, again, being on the conservative side,” Gove said.
Upcoming new growth streams include a new facilities building and restaurant set to be built at The Marina at Amesbury Point as well as a Starbucks on Clarks Road, which received site plan review approval in August.
“We, again, feel confident in the number for this year, so we’ll continue to meet and watch those numbers,” Gove said.
During the presentation Gove also spoke about what the city has in free cash, sharing that in fiscal 2025 it was at $7,550,204.
Some of it has been spent or will soon be spent, with $1.9 million going toward the acquisition of BankProv’s headquarters located at 5 Market St. for the new City Hall building, as well as an additional $500,000 if the council eventually passes a proposed baseball field project.
“That would bring the total down to $5,150,204,” Gove said.
She also shared that the city’s projected total fiscal 2026 tax levy is $61,764,729.
The city’s total levy is a combination of its debt exclusion and property tax levy, which is the revenue a community can raise through real and personal property taxes.
City Councilor Pam Gilday spoke about the upcoming budget schedule.
“The mayor will be submitting the proposed FY 2026 budget to us May 5. At some point we’re going to need to decide when to have the council’s ad hoc budget committee meetings of the whole to have the departments come and speak to us,” Gilday said.
She said those meetings will be taking place between May 20 and May 31.
Before the meeting ended, the council unanimously approved a bill drafted by Gilday to send a memo requesting that the state Legislature revisit and revise the Chapter 70 funding formula to improve its funding equity across all public school districts.
The Chapter 70 program is the major program of state aid to public elementary and secondary schools.
“The state needs to step up and pay their share. They haven’t been, and this won’t fix our problems for this year, of course, but this needs to get done,” Gilday said.
Gilday’s remarks came just a day after Superintendent Elizabeth McAndrews shared grim news to the School Committee that the school budget could be looking at more than $2 million in reductions from level services.
During her presentation, McAndrews shared that in order to maintain level services, the school budget would need to be $41,149,300 – a $3,203,862 increase, or 8.44 percent – over the fiscal 2025 budget.
Unfortunately, McAndrews said they are unlikely to get that amount, instead having been told they are likely to get between a 2.5 percent increase and 3 percent increase.
A 2.5 percent increase ($948,636) would come up $2,255,226 short of level services, while a 3 percent increase ($1,138,363) would be short $2,065,499. Even an optimistic 5 percent increase ($1,897,272) as shared by McAndrews would come up $1,306,590 short.
The largest proposed non-student facing cut was to move Amesbury Innovation High School, currently located at 71 Friend St., to Amesbury High School.
AIHS is a small, alternative high school located in downtown Amesbury founded in 2001 by a group of teachers and administrators who felt there was a need to provide an alternative to students who were not succeeding in a traditional high school setting, according to its website.
In terms of other cuts to get to the 5 percent mark, McAndrews said world language at Amesbury Middle School, an AHS librarian, AHS art teacher, and district dyslexia specialist would be among a list of 10 reductions.
To reach the 3 percent mark, further reductions like the removal of AHS buses, AMS co-curriculars and 10 more staffed positions would be considered. McAndrews said she was not happy to have to share these realities.
Members of the School Committee shared after McAndrew’s presentation Monday night that they would support a proposition 2½ override.
A proposition 2½ override allows a community to assess taxes in excess of the automatic annual 2.5 percent increase and any increase due to new growth by passing an override, according to mass.gov.