Brookline General Fund · FY2027 to FY2040
Move the assumptions and watch revenue and spending through 2040. Every setting starts at the base case: the FY2027 budget Town Meeting adopted, with the May 2026 override, carried forward on Brookline's own record since FY2011.
Room is revenue minus the cost of continuing today's services. Positive room can pay for new priorities or capital; negative room means cuts or new revenue.
Why the base case differs from the Town's plan
The Town's Long-Range Financial Plan (January 2026) shows a gap of $42.7M by FY2031. The base case on this page shows +$15.8M of room that year. The two answer different questions. The Town's plan is deliberately cautious, since being wrong in the optimistic direction means painful cuts if spending outruns revenue. This page's base case asks what happens if costs and revenue keep behaving as they have.
Two things explain most of the difference. The May 2026 override passed four months after the Town's plan was written. And the Town's plan takes school costs from the School Department's own forecast, made before any look at efficiencies, with salaries rising about 5% a year; the base case has school pay rising about 3.7% a year, the middle of the range the School Department's own budget arithmetic gives for the current contract.
FY2031 balance, from the Town's plan to the base case, before any settings on this page are moved (a gap is negative, room positive)
| Step, FY2031 | What differs | Change | Running |
|---|---|---|---|
| Start | The Town's plan: the FY2027 to FY2031 Long-Range Financial Plan, presented January 13, 2026 | −$42.7M | |
| 1. The override | Passed May 2026, after the Town's plan was written. It phases in over three years: $9.9M in FY2027, $5.6M in FY2028 and $7.8M in FY2029. Each piece then grows with the levy. By FY2031 it is worth $27.3M a year. | +$27.3M | −$15.5M |
| 2. New growth | The Town's plan assumes a flat $2.5M a year; the base case continues the recent rate, 1.28% of the levy, which grows as the levy does: about $4.1M in FY2028, rising to about $4.7M in FY2031 | +$8.8M | −$6.7M |
| 3. Other revenue | Both budget local receipts well below what is collected (Brookline budgeted $33.1M in FY2025 and collected $44.4M). The difference is growth. The Town's plan grows budgeted receipts about 1.5% a year from FY2027 and state aid about 2.5%; the base case lets collections grow at their FY2019 to FY2025 pace (budgeted receipts about 3% a year) and state aid at its FY2015 to FY2025 rate (3.5%), and returns each year's surplus as free cash two years later. In FY2031: receipts +$3.8M, free cash +$2.6M, state aid +$1.6M. | +$8.1M | +$1.4M |
| 4. Schools | Both hold school staffing constant. The Town's plan uses the School Department's pre-efficiency forecast, with salaries rising about 5% a year and enrollment flat; the base case has salaries rising about 3.7% a year and enrollment following NESDEC's projected decline | +$14.4M | +$15.8M |
| 5. Town departments | The Town's plan grows Town department spending slowly: matching it would take raises of only about 1.5% a year with staff flat. The base case uses 3.0% (4.5% for Public Safety), so on this step the base case is the more cautious one | −$5.2M | +$10.6M |
| 6. Capital and reserves | The Town's plan carries higher capital lines than the six-year capital funding table the Town published later in the FY2027 Financial Plan. That table follows the Select Board's policy: capital funding equal to 6.6% of the prior year's net revenue, 4.5% for debt and 2.1% paid in cash. The base case uses the table. | +$4.8M | +$15.4M |
| 7. Other and rounding | Small differences, mostly in benefits | +$0.4M | +$15.8M |
| End | The base case, FY2031 | +$15.8M |
The two biggest differences are the override that passed and school pay. Together, steps 1 and 4 are $41.7M of the $58.5M between the Town's plan and the base case. The override is a decision, not a disagreement. School pay is the real difference of view, and it turns on one number: whether it keeps rising about 5% a year. The teachers' contracts expired August 31, 2026 and are being negotiated now.
The full walk is in section 4a of the reference document, including the year-by-year arithmetic behind the override's $27.3M.
Millions of dollars a year, operating basis (excluded debt left out of both). Shading is the room.
Spending by part of the budget, millions of dollars. The line is revenue.
This page runs the same driver forecast as the reference document, rebuilt to run in the browser. Before publishing, it was checked against the Python model for the base case, all 23 single-assumption tests in "What decides FY2040", sixteen new-growth settings and three changes to revenue growth rates; every year matched within $5.
Each part of the budget moves with its own drivers from FY2028: staff counts, pay, prices, health premiums, enrollment, and the homes and commercial space that new growth brings. Revenue follows Proposition 2½ (the levy grows 2.5% a year plus new growth), state aid and local receipts at their recent growth, and free cash arriving two years after the surplus that creates it.
One setting has no counterpart in the Python model: a further override. It is added to the levy in the year chosen and grows 2.5% a year after that.