"The money is there. They just need to find it."
It's the most common thing people say about the city budget. So here is Beverly's actual FY2027 budget, balanced the way the city balanced it. Now you're in the chair. Change the trash fee, put back what they cut, reach for money that isn't the Council's to simply take. Every lever is real, and so is its catch. Watch the balance at the bottom of your screen.
Beverly closed its FY2026 books with about $10.5M in certified free cash. Free cash is last year's leftover, the money the city took in above what it spent, certified by the state after the books close. It's the pool available to appropriate the next year, which is why people say the money is there. But it's one-time money: state rules bar it from funding recurring costs like salaries, because the job vanishes the year the surplus dips. Most of it gets claimed each year, routed to roads, the stabilization fund, the retiree-health trust, and capital projects, and what the Council never appropriates rolls forward into next year's pool. It sits outside the operating budget below. When your choices over-balance the budget, the extra lands here, in free cash, not in services.
1. The trash fee
The year's loudest fight, and the one lever the Council could pull on its own. Trash runs as a break-even account; whatever residents don't pay in fees, the general fund covers, pulling money from everything else. The higher the fee, the less the general fund covers, and the smaller the gap the cuts have to close. It also means residents pay more directly. That's the trade.
The schedule the Council adopted, 7-2. More than before, less than the mayor wanted. At this fee the general fund still covers $1.40M of the trash program, leaving $1.81M for the cuts below to close.
2. The cuts that balanced the budget
These are the reductions in the mayor's proposed budget, the ones that actually close the gap, switched on. Toggle one off to put the service back, and the budget falls short by that amount. Then you have to find it elsewhere. Almost every dollar here is a job or a service someone uses.
Kept as-is, these cuts total $1.81M, exactly what the adopted trash fee left to close. That's why the budget starts balanced.
3. What the Council cut during review
On June 23 the Council added $93,120 more in cuts, on top of a budget the mayor had already balanced. Here is the part that surprises people: these don't close the gap. The budget was already closed. They land in free cash instead, one-time money that can't pay for recurring services. So these cuts eliminated positions to generate savings that legally can't be spent on positions.
Kept on, these add $93,120 to free cash, not to the operating budget. Toggle them off and the budget still balances; you simply generate less one-time cash.
4. The revenue side
More money coming in means fewer cuts. But almost none of this is the Council's to decide. Property taxes are hard-capped by state law. The rest needs someone else to say yes: the voters, the unions, the institutions, or the market. Each lever carries the condition that would have to be true first.
Why this figure?
Beverly's Financial Forecast Committee has flagged that joining the GIC could save "several million" a year. $2M is a deliberately conservative floor; the real number depends on plan design, enrollment, and what the unions accept.
Why this figure?
Beverly collects roughly $250K in voluntary payments today. Cities with formal PILOT programs collect several times that from their large institutions, so $500K is a modest step up, closer to a doubling than a ceiling.
5. Still short? Cut deeper
If you put services back or lowered the fee, this is where the money runs out. The big departments, cut on top of what the city already did. Watch the job count climb, and how fast you reach schools, police, and fire, because that's where the money is.
Balanced. The bill: about 10 city jobs, plus $93K to free cash.
That's the budget the city actually passed: the middle trash fee, the cuts in the proposed budget that balanced it, and the Council's extra cuts landing in free cash. Now move a lever. Every version balances a different way, and somebody pays for each one.