$623,763  Budget Shortfall

The issue was exacerbated in 2024 when someone removed $189,146.47 from Guilford’s reserve fund to cover the first shortfall. However, whomever executed that transaction did not notify the Selectboard.

 

This created two problems. First, the SB never legally authorized the transaction.

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Guilford’s Reserve Fund Policy  was voted on and established by Vermont law. Guilford’s policy was revised in October of 2024 (around the time of this transaction) and states, “that any expenditure of the fund by the selectboard shall require approval of a majority of selectboard members at a duly warned selectboard meeting.”

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Second, since the SB never authorized the transfer, there was no opportunity to fix the problem.

 

It was the duplicate errors in 2024 and 25 that prompted the professional auditor to look deeper. That’s when she discovered the Articles being voted on at Town Meeting were different than the proposed budgets.

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The SB claims to be “mostly” unaware of this transaction until their meeting on 9/08/25. By that time, the 2026 budget had already been voted on, so there was no opportunity to catch the error for the third time.

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Whomever executed the transaction and by what authority, created an avalanche effect beyond the $623,763 worth of budget shortfalls.

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For instance, Guilford residents voted to allocate up to $68,000 to law enforcement services through the Windham Sheriff’s office. Those funds were not used for several reasons. In order to keep that money assigned to law enforcement, the professional auditor had recommended, some time ago, that the SB assign those funds.

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The SB eventually assigned those funds however, they had to rescind their vote when the auditor later informed them that "funds can not be assign that don’t exist.”

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For those funds to be legally allocated for anything other than Sherriff services, it must be voted on at Town meeting or a special Town meeting. How can that money no longer exist you ask, well, because it was spent on other things improperly.

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To add, Guilford’s Reserve Fund has been pillaged for years and now it’s taking another hit, putting the fund at risk of falling below its required minimum amount.

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The SB is now seeking legal advice (presumably at $400 per hour) to determine “if the transfer from the reserve fund needs to be authorized retroactively, or whether some other action is required.”

 

The question they should be asking is, who executed that transaction and under what authority? When the SB determines that, they can then ask some real questions.

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The SB made no mention of any of this in their last meeting.