Budget season is never really ever too far away, and the Bristol Warren Regional School Committee has already begun implementing its calendar for the Fiscal Year 2027-28 deliberations.

The budget subcommittee and the district's leadership group had already met leading up to the full committee's session held October 5.

That evening, the committee adopted a timeline for the process, culminating with the second and final gathering of the Joint Finance Committee on March 18, when they will formally forward a recommendation on the budget back to the full board for its final approval.

School Committee Chairman Adam McGovern said the calendar showed "a lot of different examples of how the budget will be worked through at the school level to the district level in front of us with transparency and the ability to participate."

Sports gate receipts
The committee held a rather lengthy discussion on the current and future status of revenue generated through gate receipts from sports events in the district.

Danielle Carey, the district's chief financial officer, told members an audit to close out the 2025-26 fiscal year showed approximately $39,000 had been gained from ticket sales.

Superintendent Ana Riley noted that figure was actually a bit less than is typical because several Mt. Hope High School contests not taking place on grounds due to construction of the new building.

Football, last year and this, is playing a limited home schedule at Veterans Field in Warren and the soccer teams have hosted several games at the Roger Williams University practice field where admission cannot feasibly be charged for every event.

Said Riley, "Remember that we're not in our normal fields, so we're not actually able to take in what we would typically take in."

She continued, "When we have our fields on the new campus, I think then you'll see this number should increase. We get quite good attendance at the football games, for example, and none of that is in this item."

Committee member Nicky Piper requested some or all of the gate receipts be specifically budgeted towards maintenance of the artificial playing surface to be installed at the new MHHS athletics stadium.

Piper noted, "We did make a commitment to the Town of Bristol that we would put money aside every year to replace the turf. And at that time, we had assumed it would be this money that we get from gate receipts. So I just think we need to formalize that somehow, so that when we're all gone that we're honoring that commitment."

Fellow member Glenn Donovan inquired about how the committee should proceed on the turf issue. Carey said it could include creating a restricted fund in the budget designated to be used on the surface replacement only.

Piper also urged the committee to embed the provision in its formal list of priorities.

"I think there should be something that says, when we're all gone and people forget that every year they have to take this action, I think it should be something that's memorialized in policy to make sure that it gets done," she explained.

Piper, as well, raised the matter of how much, if at all, students should be charged to attend sporting events.

"Just to have that conversation. I think is important, and I think that should start at budget," Piper said.

McGovern brought the discussion to a close, saying, "Certainly, there's some things to discuss as we get closer to our new school related to this policy, student prices and just passes in general, which I think we discuss as well."

Strategic plan
Riley sought the input from the committee on a request for proposal bid process about the district's next strategic plan, replacing the current guide that expires at the conclusion of the 2026-27 term.


"The time to start working on a new strategic plan is now. We don't really want to wait on that," Riley said.

Formulating a strategic plan, which states the overall aims of the district for the ensuing five years, includes gaining the input from many constituencies.

Riley said the process typically takes some six months. She also recommended hiring consultants who specialize in the discipline, saying the cost range to do so would be between $50,000-$200,000.

The superintendent suggested the committee approved an amount up to "around $100,000." She also explained the variance in the fees represent "the volume of the interactions" the firm has during the process, like meetings with personnel, site visits and surveys conducted.

Upon an inquiry by committee member Jessica Almeida about how would the consultants be paid, Riley and Carey said monies are available in the district's surplus fund.

Carey said the district ended last fiscal year with $3.4 million balance, with an estimated $106,000 to be added this fiscal year.

Under the district's "2+2" financial plan, which requires a 4% balance in the surplus fund, the projected $3.56 million raises the percentage in the black to 5.7%.

"Even if you just used part of the surplus, then I'm expecting us to have at the end of this year, that could cover the cost of it," Carey said, referring to the $106K figure.


The previous strategic plan procedure was done in-house without the aid of experts and prior to Riley becoming the superintendent.

Piper recommended her peers agree to hiring professionals, remembering the effort begun during the 2021-22 term as being "extremely labor intensive. And it took a long time, because we didn't use an outside consultant.

"Also, in my opinion, there is some value to using an outside consultant, because then, it's not our bias. It's objective. The information that we're getting is way more objective, and so we're able to take objective information and make a decision about what our priorities are based on that."

She added if one were putting a dollar amount on what it took to put together the previous plan, "We would have spent more than $100,000 off people's time doing it the last time."

Committee member Carly Reich, who like Piper represented her peers in developing the plan, concurred with that observation.

She deemed the process "incredibly difficult to moderate," especially because much of the conversations took place virtually as it was started under the restrictions imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"The people in charge of these particular sessions, sometimes people like me, who didn't have any training in that, were moderating some pretty grumpy stakeholders," Reich said. "So, I think that would also be a big bonus of having a professional organization do it. They'll hopefully keep the temperature down in the room if you have somebody that does this for a living."

At the behest of Piper and Almeida, and agreed upon by the full body, the committee tabled the RFP to the board's next meeting for further consideration.