Strafford News

The City Manager will present his proposed fiscal year 2024 budget to the City Council at a special meeting this Wednesday, Feb. 15.

City Manager J. Michael Joyal, Jr.’s presentation will provide an overview of the proposed budget, which includes the School Department’s budget, recently adopted by the School Board.

Beginning in March, the City Council will hold a series of budget workshops and schedule two public hearings on the budget. The first will be a public hearing on the School Department’s budget on Wednesday, March 15. The public hearing on the city budget will be the following week, on Wednesday, March 22.

Budget documents and presentations will be posted to the FY2024 Budget Revealed webpage available at https://www.dover.nh.gov/government/open-government/budgetrevealed/fy2024-budget/. The page contains the School Board’s FY2024 budget process, including its adopted budget and videos of budget workshops and meetings. It also has links to the current and previous fiscal year budgets.

Last year, the City Council revised the annual budget calendar through an ordinance change. School Board now delivers its budget annually to the City Manager by Jan. 15. The City Manager, in turn, submits their budget annually to the City Council by Feb. 15. The City Council’s deadline to adopt the budget is April 15. The new fiscal year begins on July 1.

Tentative schedule of City Council budget meetings and workshops

• Feb. 15: City Manager’s budget presentation to the City Council
• March 1: Budget workshop on Executive, Finance, Recreation, Welfare, DoverNet and Library department budgets March 8: Budget workshop on the School Department budget
• March 15: Special meeting, including a public hearing on the School Department’s budget
• March 15: Following the special meeting, budget workshop on the Police, Fire and Rescue, and Planning budgets
• March 22: Regular meeting, including a public hearing on the City portion of the proposed budget
• March 29: Budget workshop on the Community Services budget
• April 5: Budget workshop, followed by a special meeting for the adoption of the budget
• April 12: Regular meeting, which is also reserved as a fallback date for budget adoption, if necessary

All the above meetings and workshops will be held on Wednesdays at 7 p.m. in City Hall’s Council Chambers.

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The Budget Revealed newsletter is a weekly update on the City Council’s budget process. It contains brief highlights of the week’s budget presentations, the upcoming schedule and other budget tidbits. To sign up for these emails, visit https://bit.ly/dovernewsletters and add “Budget Revealed” to your current email subscription list.

Original source can be found here.