What the budget reduces

The FY27 budget is built in stages. Each department submits a request for the coming year. The City Manager then reviews those requests and applies adjustments — called supplementals — before presenting a recommended budget to the City Council. Most supplementals are additions: new positions, expanded programs, cost increases. Some are reductions.

This page covers two kinds of reductions in the FY27 budget: reductions made during the City Manager's review of department requests, and reductions where a department's own request was meaningfully below the prior year's funding level. Some cost centers show year-over-year decreases that may reflect either reductions in service capacity or budgets aligning with actual spending. Where the interpretation is uncertain, the item is not included.

Where the budget reduces funding for a position or program, the reduction appears across multiple budget lines — wages, health insurance, retirement contributions, and other benefits for a single position each generate a separate line item. What looks like many small reductions in the raw data is a smaller number of underlying decisions.

The reductions identified here are specific to the FY27 City Manager's Recommended budget. They represent changes from the FY26 adopted budget or from the FY27 department request. This page does not cover longer-term spending trends, reductions in prior fiscal years, or changes the Council may make during its review.

Source: General Fund expenditure detail, pages 24–30, and departmental detail, pages 33–169 of the FY27 budget. Supplemental adjustments appear in the "CM Suppl" column.

At a glance

Reductions made during the City Manager's review

The 26 line items below total $667,601 in reductions applied through the supplemental process. Each traces to a negative entry in the CM Supplemental column of the budget's expenditure detail.

Personnel reductions

When the budget does not fund a position, the reduction appears across every line item associated with that position: wages, health insurance, retirement contributions, Social Security, workers' compensation, and dental insurance. The 24 personnel line items with negative supplementals represent 4 underlying position decisions in 4 cost centers.

Three of the four positions are partially reduced — the wage line is reduced, consistent with removing one position from a budget line that covers multiple employees. The Police Investigations, Community Development, and Fire Administration reductions each represent one position that is not funded in the FY27 recommended budget.

The Emergency Operations Center reduction is structurally different: the hourly wages line is reduced from $43,680 to $0 in the City Manager's Recommended budget. The associated benefit lines are reduced to near-zero. This position is not funded in FY27.

Line-item detail

Each position's reduction broken down by budget line. Click a position to see the individual wage and benefit adjustments.

Program reductions

Two line items in the Essential Community Services cost center show reductions to external partner programs. These are community contributions administered through the Mayor and Council department. Unlike the personnel reductions above, these reductions appear in the department's own request — the FY27 department request is lower than the FY26 adopted budget for both programs, and the City Manager's recommended amount matches the department request.

Monadnock Family Services Street Outreach provides outreach services to homeless individuals in the Monadnock Region. The budget's Outside Agencies section describes the program as serving an average of 60 people per month, with 6–7 individuals finding suitable shelter each month. The FY27 budget includes $9,850, a reduction of $25,150 from the FY26 level of $35,000.

Arts Alive appears as a line item in the Essential Community Services cost center. The FY27 budget does not include a narrative description of this program in its Outside Agencies section. The FY27 budget includes $1,000, a reduction of $9,000 from the FY26 level of $10,000.

The FY27 budget does not explain the reasoning behind either reduction. Residents seeking context on these changes may contact the City Manager's Office or raise the question at Council during the budget review process.

Reductions proposed by departments

Some reductions do not appear in the supplemental column because the department's own request was already below the prior year's funding level. The City Manager's review did not adjust these further. This section covers cost centers where FY27 funding is meaningfully below FY26 and the reduction is not explained by budgets aligning with prior-year actual spending.

What this page does not cover

• Ambiguous year-over-year decreases. Some cost centers show year-over-year decreases that may reflect either reductions in service capacity or budgets aligning with actual spending patterns from prior years. Where the data does not clearly distinguish between these interpretations, the item is not included on this page.
• Revenue reductions. The revenue side of the budget is covered on the revenue page. This page focuses on the spending side.
• Capital project deferrals. The Capital Improvement Program shows what is planned for capital investment. Deferred capital decisions are addressed on the capital plans page.
• Reductions in prior years. The FY27 budget covers FY27. Multi-year trend analysis of reductions is not in scope for the discovery layer.
• Reductions in enterprise funds. Water, sewer, solid waste, and parking operate as enterprise funds with their own budgets. Changes in those funds are covered on the other funds page.
• Revenue line-item declines. Declines in specific revenue sources — such as the TIF revenue reduction — are discussed on the revenue page and surfaced as questions on the questions page.

See also

• What does $57 million buy? — the broader spending picture this page sits within
• Questions the budget doesn't answer — structural questions about reductions, including unfunded positions and reductions to external partners
• Where does the money come from? — the revenue side of the General Fund

Source: General Fund expenditure detail, pages 24–30, and departmental detail, pages 33–169 of the FY27 budget. Outside Agencies descriptions, pages 42–43. All figures are City Manager recommended unless otherwise noted.