Every year we try to make some improvements to the Town Report – better information, clearer presentation, more efficient work process, more useful layout – whatever we can do to make it work better for everyone who contributes to it and everyone who uses it.

This year we wound up dealing with more changes than we’d planned, some of which we hope never to deal with again. Here’s some explanations I hope you’ll find useful as you read Andover’s 2015 Town Report.

School District Report

Having the annual School District Report as part of the Town Report every year has meant that the Town Report had to be finished well before the statutory deadline for Town Report, in order to be available in time for School District Meeting (which usually falls eight days before Town Meeting).

With the budget preparation process getting more and more complex and taking longer and longer every year, we’ve asked the School District to publish their own School District Report on whatever schedule suits them. They’ve graciously agreed, buying us a little breathing room for the Town Report.

So the first big change you’ll notice is that the 2016 Andover Town Report does not include the Andover School District Report, which has been available around town since mid-February. The plan is to continue with separate reports from now on.

New Budget Presentation

The New Hampshire Department of Revenue Administration (DRA) suggests that all New Hampshire towns present their budgets to the community in a form that’s noticeably more summarized than Andover has traditionally used. The Board of Selectmen decided that starting this year, the Town Report will reflect DRA’s suggestion, in hopes that the new summarized format will make the budget easier to understand and lead to a simpler, quicker, more focused discussion at Town Meeting.

The result, as you’ll see in the Town Report, is that the proposed budget for 2016 (not counting the warrant articles) fits on a single page, rather than spilling across more than three pages as it did in years past. That is the same format that the official posted budget will take, and it is the format that will drive the discussion of the budget at Town Meeting.

But for those of you who thrive on details, rest assured that in the Town Office, we still prepare the budgets in full detail; in fact, the fully-detailed version of the budget is available on the Town Web site at Andover.NH.us.

Missing Budget Committee Numbers

Another change you’ll notice in this year’s Town Report, and one we hope never to repeat, is the absence of Budget Committee budget recommendations and revenue estimates in the printed Town Report itself.

Because the Budget Committee postponed its final budget deliberations past the printing deadline for the Town Report we’d negotiated months earlier with the printer, we had no choice but to “go to press” without that information in order to be sure of meeting the statutory requirement for when the Town Report must appear.

But there’s also a statutory requirement that the Town Report include both the Selectmen’s and the Budget Committee’s recommendations and estimates, so on the advice of Town counsel and the DRA, we’ve met the statutory requirement with the insert you’ll find in each copy of the Town Report. It works, but just barely, and it’s definitely an experience we see no reason ever to repeat.

I hope you enjoy the 2015 Andover Town Report, and I look forward to everyone’s help and cooperation in making next year’s process the smoothest yet.