# FinCom Web Reporting Framework

Copyright © 2026 Sherie Schaefer. All rights reserved. Public records, public data, mathematical principles, and third-party materials retain their respective status and ownership.

## Purpose

Support Finance Committee advice to Town Meeting with a repeatable chain from authority and baseline through affordability, alternatives, consequences, and accountability. The report must be understandable to committee members and residents while preserving enough provenance for technical review.

## Governing sequence

| Gate | Committee question | Required output |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Decision | What is being authorized, by whom, and when? | Decision statement, authority, deadline, objective |
| 2. Baseline | What exists before the proposal? | Current service, demand, asset, staffing, debt, and reserve baseline |
| 3. Measure identity | What does each number mean? | Value, unit, period, fund, stage, scope, source, evidence state |
| 4. Money flow | Where does each dollar originate and land? | Sources/uses reconciliation, bridges, overlap controls |
| 5. Affordability | Can the whole system carry it? | Recurring, annual cash-flow, long-term capital, household/service tests |
| 6. Alternatives | What else could meet the objective? | Comparable status quo, repair, stage, replace, and service-model options |
| 7. Consequences | Who gains, pays, waits, or loses service? | Value, distribution, opportunity cost, uncertainty, reversibility |
| 8. Advice | What should happen and under what conditions? | Recommendation, rationale, opposing view, conditions, owner, milestones, triggers |

FinCom is advisory. Town Meeting has appropriating authority. Budget preparation, independent review, advice, authorization, execution, and monitoring must remain distinct.

## Evidence-state contract

- `SOURCE_REPORTED`: reproduced directly from an identified source.
- `NORMALIZED`: conformed without changing source meaning.
- `RECONCILED`: matched across compatible records with an explicit bridge.
- `CALCULATED`: formula, numerator, denominator, and rounding are available.
- `ALLOCATED`: total distributed by an identified rule.
- `ESTIMATED`: method and uncertainty are disclosed.
- `ASSUMED`: decision-model input selected for analysis.
- `CONFLICTED`: sources or scopes disagree and no valid bridge exists.
- `MISSING`: required evidence is absent.

`MISSING`, null, blank, and invalid are never converted to zero.

## Minimum measure identity

Every numeric record used in prose, a card, table, or chart requires:

- stable measure ID and human label;
- value and unit;
- fiscal, calendar, or academic period;
- fund and organizational scope;
- budget, actual, authorization, cash, or balance stage;
- source record and effective date;
- evidence state and transformation note;
- compatible comparison group, if any;
- freshness status and unresolved issue link.

## Database-to-decision promotion map

The source catalog can remain broad. The interface should consume governed decision views grouped into:

1. decision authority: warrant articles, motions, votes, and conditions;
2. municipal operating baseline: budgets, actuals, staffing, and services;
3. HWRSD: assessments, district debt, enrollment, and allocation rules;
4. capital portfolio: assets, conditions, projects, dependencies, and lifecycle;
5. debt and cash: authorizations, BANs, takeouts, bonds, and payment schedules;
6. recurring capacity: levy, new growth, recurring receipts, and reserves;
7. household consequences: parcels, exemptions, tax timing, and distribution;
8. outcomes and risk: service measures, access, scenarios, and uncertainties.

High-volume provenance tables remain available for drill-through and QA; they should not become undigested dashboard cards.

## Non-substitution controls

- budget is not actual;
- appropriation is not cash;
- authorization is not issued debt;
- original principal is not outstanding principal;
- levy is not audit property-tax revenue;
- fund balance is not free cash;
- a district total is not automatically Wilbraham's share;
- an empty or null value is not zero;
- a legal borrowing capacity is not the same as affordability;
- a one-time resource is not recurring capacity.

## Four affordability tests

1. **Recurring balance:** dependable recurring revenues cover continuing baseline services and the recurring proposal requirement.
2. **Cash-flow timing:** appropriations, borrowing, reimbursements, construction draws, debt service, and operations are aligned by year.
3. **Capital sustainability:** the proposal fits the complete asset, debt, and maintenance portfolio without hiding displacement.
4. **Household and service consequence:** tax timing and distribution are visible, along with services reduced, delayed, or placed at risk if assumptions fail.

## Macroeconomic and external-force controls

Every decision model must distinguish three transmission paths:

1. **Cash-flow change:** prices, wages, benefits, receipts, borrowing costs, or investment income actually change.
2. **Measurement change:** a present-value or actuarial amount changes without automatically changing the underlying promise or current-year cash.
3. **Legal-capacity change:** assessed value, new growth, or a statutory rule changes a ceiling or levy path.

Minimum scenario inputs include discount rate, general inflation, construction escalation, compensation growth, health-cost trend, borrowing rates, taxable assessed value, new growth, state aid, and regional-school assessment assumptions. Nominal cash flows require a nominal discount rate; real cash flows require a real discount rate. Base, downside, and upside cases must show the rate, period, source, owner, and trigger for refresh.

The FY2025 Wilbraham Finance Committee presentation is a local precedent for using discount-rate and present-value information: it described an OPEB liability decrease as related to a favorable discount rate resulting from investment of OPEB funds. The presentation identifies Kevin Hanks as Chair and Todd Schneider as Vice Chair. It does not use the title co-chair. The precedent supports use of present-value analysis in a building scenario; it does not support hiding future cash flows or treating a lower present value as annual budget capacity.

The FY2024 audited OPEB sensitivity is the required cautionary example: net OPEB liability was $8,746,406 at 7.00%, $10,402,863 at 6.00%, and $7,370,082 at 8.00%. A discount-rate change does not by itself erase promised retiree health benefits or create cash.

For Proposition 2½, assessed-value appreciation raises the absolute levy ceiling but does not automatically create ordinary annual levy capacity. FY2026 controls are:

- ordinary levy limit before exclusions: $48,189,785;
- maximum allowable levy including exclusions: $50,069,014;
- actual total tax levy: $48,746,259;
- unused levy capacity: $1,322,755, or 2.64% of the maximum;
- levy ceiling: $69,837,048 on $2,793,481,911 of taxable assessed value;
- direct actual-levy-to-ceiling stress: a 30.2% aggregate valuation decrease;
- statutory ordinary-limit-to-ceiling stress: approximately 31.0%, with exclusions treated separately.

The calculation and source rows are preserved in `MACRO-FACTOR-CLAIM-CONTROL.csv`.

## Recommendation record

The final record should state:

- **Action:** approve, reject, defer, or amend;
- **Because:** the evidence and reasoning;
- **Even though:** the strongest opposing consideration;
- **Provided that:** conditions of support;
- **Review when:** measurable reconsideration triggers;
- implementation owner, milestones, dates, dissent, and unresolved evidence.

## Acceptance gates

A publishable current-decision report requires:

- authority and deadline confirmed;
- current-service baseline documented;
- every headline number scoped and sourced;
- Town and HWRSD finances integrated;
- sources and uses reconciled;
- all four affordability tests complete;
- feasible alternatives and status quo compared consistently;
- opportunity cost and affected populations identified;
- five-, ten-, and twenty-year consequences visible;
- conditions, owners, milestones, and review triggers assigned;
- refresh evidence, row counts, totals, load IDs, and unresolved issues recorded;
- publication approval kept separate from database and repository release.