PARIS — Voters will decide Monday whether to authorize money for budget overdrafts and allocate surplus funds to contingency and reserve accounts.

The town meeting will begin at 6:30 p.m. Jan. 9 at the Town Office, 33 Market Square. The regular selectmen meeting is set for 7 p.m.

The first financial article asks voters to use $168,319 from surplus to cover town accounts for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2016. An article authorizing coverage of overdrafts was inadvertently left off the June 2016 annual town meeting warrant. Selectmen and the Budget Committee recommend passage of the article.

Town Manager Vic Hodgkins recently said the overdrafts have already been paid since the fiscal year closed last summer. Overdrafts include two police officers out on workers’ compensation, wages, contributions to the state retirement system and lien filings in administration, 53 payroll periods instead of 52, solid waste costing more than what was anticipated, attorney fees, insurance rate increases, and more tax abatements than normal.

If voters opt to not approve the article, selectmen at the time could be on the hook to pay up if the issue is pressed in court. They would be Janet Jamison, Hodgkins, Mike Risica, Sam Elliot and Robert Wessels.

Hodgkins said he expects “reasonable minds to prevail” and for voters to authorize the overdrafts.

The other two financial articles ask to appropriate $35,000 from surplus to the unclassified Contingency Account and $40,921 from surplus to the General Reserve Account. Selectmen and the Budget Committee recommend passage of both articles.

In May 2016, selectmen voted to allocate $93,840 from the undesignated fund balance to make a $17,919 interest payment on a bond loan for the Fire Station and to add the remaining money to contingency and reserves. It was discovered during the town’s financial audit that the money was never moved since it is surplus and requires voter approval.

The bond interest payment has already been paid and is not on the special town meeting warrant.

Selectmen voted to move the money at the recommendation of then-interim Town Manager Sawin Millett because the town’s surplus exceeded the recommended 12 to 15 percent.

Hodgkins advocated moving the surplus money, especially the $35,000 to contingency. Because selectmen thought the money had been reallocated, only $15,000 was put into contingency this most recent budget cycle. The majority of that has been spent on back pay for two employees who were not classified correctly, and costs associated with the former Mildred M. Fox School.

There are other contingency needs for the rest of the fiscal year, including upcoming attorney fees, paying Matt Eddy for his work on the town’s tax-increment financing district, potentially bumping Town Clerk Liz Knox’s pay to the federally mandated wage, union contracts, and FICA/Medicare payback.

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