The money
Every question below is one this project went looking for and could not settle from the published records — and, where one is known, the single document that would.
Six questions about the same dollar, coarsest first. The archive answers 3, answers 1 in part, and cannot answer the last 2. The following stops at rung 4. The bottom rungs are answered in full for one fund of 61 — 277 postings for the athletics revolving fund — which is what shows the rest to be unpublished rather than impossible. One rung is the exception: no key for it exists on either side, and no document can make one.
department · 300, 301
The district prints a budget workbook; the town prints the same department in its year-to-date ledger. Both sides supply the key, and the join was run.
what it does not reach · A department total says nothing about which category, which school or which fund paid.
351
budget lines in the district workbook
606
town accounts carrying an FY26 appropriation
$26,287,474
appropriated to the school department, as the ledger opened
revenue account · object 4xxxxx
The town runs a revenue report by account. Every source it books is named, budgeted and received on the same line.
what it does not reach · It says what arrived. It never says what any of it went on to pay for — that is rung 6.
224
revenue accounts in the FY26 ledger, across 7 funds
$41,160,567
received, through the period this report covers
$6,870,136
of it Chapter 70 school aid
account number · 0100-S2055101-511001
The year-to-date report run with totals off prints every account: what was appropriated, what was spent, what is left.
what it does not reach · An account is a bucket, not a purchase. Two schools share a code and the printed names truncate at ten characters.
635
general-fund accounts, across 69 departments
259
of them in the school department
$25,657,318
spent against the school department accounts
no key — the ledger prints a net, not a pair
The ledger carries a transfers column, so the SIZE of the movement into or out of an account is visible.
what it does not reach · Only the net. Nothing names the account the money came from, and no budget document shows a transfer at all — they are approved during the year, after the document was printed.
the register says · two transfer lines · no project detail
305
of 635 accounts show a mid-year adjustment
$4,971,010
moved in or out, added up without netting
$708,990
of it across the school department's 83 adjusted accounts
check, warrant, journal
Nothing, for the general fund. This is the tier we do not have.
what it does not reach · Held for exactly one fund, because exactly one was asked for and produced. The report that would produce the rest is the one the town already runs for the general fund.
the register says · no expense report exists for these funds · purpose is presumed, never observed
277
postings held, for the athletics fund alone
1 of 61
school funds with any transaction detail
635
general-fund accounts with none
the one place this rung is answered
Fund 1301, the athletics revolving fund, FY24–FY26: 277 postings, obtained by records request. Every one carries a document number; 57 name a counterparty and 136 carry the clerk’s own comment. It is one fund of 61 the schools ran that year — which is why the rest is unpublished rather than impossible. The town produced this report; it has not been asked to run it for anything else.
CRP 125 cash receipts postingAPP 70 accounts payable — warrant disbursementPRJ 67 payroll journalGRV 7 general journal reversal / correctionGEN 5 general journal entrySOY 3 start of year — opening balance carried forwardwould close it · glytdbud-expense for the special revenue funds — The identical report the town already runs for the general fund and for each of the four enterprise funds, pointed at funds 13xx/22xx/26xx–29xx instead.
no key exists
Both sides are complete and neither carries anything that ties them together.
what it does not reach · This is the one rung a document cannot close. Money in the general fund is fungible; the town apportions revenue across departments by share when it presents a budget, and a share is a convention rather than a flow.
the register says · Money in fund 0100 is fungible and no record ties a source to a department. The town apportions by share when presenting a budget; that is a convention, not a flow. No further data will fix this.
$6,870,136
of Chapter 70 lands in the general fund
$38,858,712
where it is indistinguishable from every other dollar in it
would document the convention · The Town Manager’s revenue apportionment worksheet — Seen once; we do not hold it.
The same six rungs, as a table
| # | question | the key it turns on | state | why |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | What was budgeted, town and school | department · 300, 301 | answerable | A department total says nothing about which category, which school or which fund paid. |
| 2 | Where the revenue came from | revenue account · object 4xxxxx | answerable | It says what arrived. It never says what any of it went on to pay for — that is rung 6. |
| 3 | What was spent, department by department and account by account | account number · 0100-S2055101-511001 | answerable | An account is a bucket, not a purchase. Two schools share a code and the printed names truncate at ten characters. |
| 4 | What money moved between accounts during the year | no key — the ledger prints a net, not a pair | in part | two transfer lines · no project detail |
| 5 | What the money was spent ON — a vendor, a service, a person | check, warrant, journal | not answerable | no expense report exists for these funds · purpose is presumed, never observed |
| 6 | Which revenue paid which expense | no key exists | never answerable | Money in fund 0100 is fungible and no record ties a source to a department. The town apportions by share when presenting a budget; that is a convention, not a flow. No further data will fix this. |
Every figure on this ladder is computed at build time by scripts/build_traceability_ladder.py from sources/data/lunenburg.db — ledger_snapshot, account, v_revenue, lps_budget_lines, fund_1301_cash_journal, school_special_revenue_fy26_q3, money_gaps, money_edges — the FY26 ledger at period 12 for the accounts and period 9 for the revenue, which is the only snapshot that carries it. The reason on each rung is quoted from the town’s gap register rather than written here. Published as /data/traceability.json. The levels and the keys are the ones already used in notes/reference/data-model/join-map.html — levels of detail, the key each turns on, and the tier we do not have.
money in
Bus fees
charged by published policy · no destination found in any ledger
Trust fund income
scholarships, cemetery, stabilisation · extract is check-failed
Student activity accounts
held by the school under its own authority · not in the town’s books at all
Grants received in earlier years
spent now, booked then · nine funds, no FY26 revenue
Whether a shortfall in state aid falls on the schools or on the rest of the town
Chapter 70 is 35% of the school appropriation and the town has no vote on it, so which side of the budget absorbs a miss is the question a resident actually has. Nothing published answers it. The free cash proof states one net cherry sheet figure for the whole town; the general ledger’s state aid accounts share no organisation code with any expense account, 0 of 222, so no aid dollar can be followed to anything it paid for; and the appropriation is voted before the final aid number is known. A year where aid rose and the appropriation rose with it and a year where aid was flat and the town covered the difference are different facts about the world and identical facts on the page. — closes: the Town’s FY-end recap (Form A-1) beside the Cherry Sheet for the same year, which states estimated and actual receipts on one page.
Why DLS certifies a different amount from the free cash its own proof identifies
The Division of Local Services’ free cash proof cross-foots exactly: in all 45 town-years of the nine-town set the eleven component lines sum, to the cent, to the workbook’s own Identified Free Cash July 1,. But that is not the figure DLS certifies. Current Year Calculation — the number the Town quotes, the number the Finance Director announced, and the number that carries into the next year — differs from it in all 45, by $361,912 for Lunenburg in 2025 and by 69% for Uxbridge in 2024. The workbook prints no reconciling line, and nothing in this archive states what the adjustment is. — closes: DLS’s free cash certification letter to the Town, which states the adjustments made between the balance sheet the Town submitted and the amount certified.
Which departments’ unspent appropriations produced the free cash
Money appropriated and not spent is the largest single component of Lunenburg’s free cash — 47% of five years of it, and 66% of the record 2025 certification. It is published as one town-wide figure across 67 departments. Prudence, a post left vacant, a project that slipped into the next year and a line that was over-budgeted from the start are four different facts about the world and one number on the page. — closes: the period 13 general ledger, showing budget, expended and turnback for each department at the year-end close.
How much of free cash is the schools’
Free cash is certified for the town as a whole. Neither the DLS proof nor the Town’s own undesignated fund balance roll-forward attributes any component to any department, so nothing published says how much of it the school department’s unspent appropriation produced — nor how much of any appropriation of it reaches the schools. The projection on this site is built from budget columns and free cash is derived from actuals; they are subtracted once, side by side, and never joined. — closes: a departmental turnback schedule for the year-end close, which would split the unexpended appropriations line by department.
Whether Lunenburg’s free cash is unusual for a town its size
The DLS proof carries no denominator — no population, budget, revenue or levy for any of the nine towns, Lunenburg included. So Littleton’s $11.3M against Shirley’s $272K says nothing about which is closer to its own target, and free cash as a share of the operating budget cannot be computed for a peer at all. Composition and volatility are ratios and do compare; the level does not, and is not shown. — closes: the Tax Rate Recapitulation (Schedule A) for each town, which prints the operating budget the ratio needs.
Why the Town’s undesignated fund balance and DLS’s free cash differ
Two publishers describe the same 30 June balance sheet and print three different figures. The Town’s annual report roll-forward gives an undesignated fund balance of $4,236,488.24 at 30 June 2025; DLS identifies $3,716,282 of free cash on the same date and certifies $3,354,370. Each worksheet cross-foots exactly to its own printed total, and the FY2024 report’s closing balance is the FY2025 report’s opening one to the cent — so neither is in error, and no document in this archive prints a line between any pair of the three. — closes: the Town’s free cash submission to DLS (the balance sheet and the reconciliation of receivables and deferred revenue that accompanies it).
Where the PEG Access balance went between FY2019 and FY2021
The fund's carried balance is continuous in the report from FY2015 to FY2019 -- each edition's Starting Balance is the previous edition's Ending Balance to the cent -- and then stops being a series. FY2019 prints a Total of $573,837.37 (starting balance, plus revenue, less expenses, plus the Comcast Tech Fund of $124,796.01); FY2020 opens at $447,813.36, $126,024.01 lower; FY2021 opens at $272,000.00, which the same page's prose states is the budget rather than a balance. One document explains part of it: Article 16 of the FY2019 Annual Town Meeting established a PEG Access Enterprise Fund under MGL c.44 s53F1/2 and transferred into it the balances of the PEG Access and Cable Related Receipts Reserved For Appropriation Fund and the Comcast Tech Capital Grant Fund as of 30 June 2019. So the fund changed legal form at exactly this point, which is why the statement changes shape. WHAT IS NOT ESTABLISHED: the amounts transferred, and therefore whether the $126,024.01 step is the transfer, a closing entry, a restatement, or something else. There is also a smaller unexplained step earlier, FY2017's Ending Balance $303,909.77 against FY2018's Starting Balance $303,551.54, $358.23 apart, with no fund change to account for it. -- closes: the Town Accountant's opening and closing trial balances for the PEG Access and Cable Related funds for FY2018, FY2019 and FY2020, showing the transfers in and out.
What quantity the Town’s own published state-aid growth rates of 5.3% and 1.4% measure
The FY2027 Town Meeting booklet states that "From FY13-FY23 state aid increased at an annual rate of 5.3%, but in the last four years, it has slowed to approximately 1.4%" (3765-town-meeting-booklet-including-warrant, line 338), and does not say which figure it grew. Rebuilding the Town’s own Subtotal State Aid line from its own revenue/expenditure worksheets — 23 consecutive budget years, FY2005 to FY2027, notes/findings/state-aid-budget-series.csv — gives 4.5660% for FY2013→FY2023 and 1.9144% for FY2023→FY2027. Neither published rate is reproducible from the Town’s own published series, so a rate quoted to Town Meeting cannot be checked against anything. — closes: the Cherry Sheets themselves (DLS form CS 1-ER for Lunenburg, one per year), or the Town Manager’s working file behind the FY2027 booklet’s revenue narrative.
How much of the FY2027 enacted state-aid increase is receipts and how much is offsetting assessments
model/finance.py grows a FY2027 base of $11,404,917 + $471,121. The first is the Governor’s GROSS cherry sheet Total Receipts, printed by the FY2027 Town Meeting booklet. The second is recorded in fy27-and-the-override.md as NET — "+$471,121 net (Ch.70, charter/choice receiving tuition, Smart Growth, UGGA, vets/elderly exemptions; offset by higher charter assessments)". A gross figure and a net figure are being added, so the gross FY2027 receipt estimate the projection actually grows is not established, and neither is how much of the increase the Town keeps. This archive holds no Cherry Sheet for any year, which is the only document that prints receipts and assessments side by side. — closes: the FY2027 Cherry Sheet for Lunenburg on the enacted budget (DLS form CS 1-ER), which states each receipt and each assessment separately.
money out
School share of the pension
inside WRRS · town and school staff together, no published split
Debt service by project
two accounts for ALL town borrowing · school buildings cannot be separated
What the capital transfers bought
two transfer lines · no project detail
What any special revenue fund bought
no expense report exists for these funds · purpose is presumed, never observed
School share of the town’s health insurance before FY2026
The town’s insurance department prints one undivided Health Insurance CH 32B line in fifteen of the sixteen annual reports · a school share is named only in the FY2023 report and in the FY2026 ledger, so no year between them can be split. — closes: The town’s Chapter 32B enrolment schedule, which counts insured employees and retirees by department and would split every year rather than the two that happened to be printed.
School share of Medicare, active health insurance and the insurance reserves
Five of the seven FY2026 insurance accounts — active health insurance, Medicare, life insurance, insurance cost control and Public Employee Committee expenses — carry nothing in their names that says which side of the town they are for, so the school portion of them is not separable in any year. — closes: The town’s Chapter 32B enrolment schedule, which counts insured employees and retirees by department.
What the four ADJ EXP journal entries moved, and from where
$254,121.18 — 65% of everything that reached the athletics revolving fund in FY2025 — arrived on four general-journal entries whose entire description is an expense adjustment made per a memo. An entry raising cash in a fund and labelled as an expense adjustment fits at least three readings: expenses charged here and later moved elsewhere, a transfer in from another fund, or a correction of charges posted to the wrong account. Those are different facts about the world and identical facts on the page, and the same shape of entry could be adjusting any fund in the town without either budget document showing a trace. — closes: the five memos the ledger names, dated 08/12/24, 01/30/25, 05/02/25, 07/02/25 and 08/20/2025.
Whether a general fund athletics line is net of the revolving fund
In FY2024 the town’s comparable athletics lines came to $124,301 against $351,643 the district’s own sport-by-sport workbook totals for the same categories — so the appropriation covered 35% of the cost. That is measurable for FY2024 and FY2025 only, because those are the only years anybody published both halves. For every other year, and every other programme, a line that rose because the cost rose looks exactly like a line that rose because a fund stopped paying part of it. — closes: the MUNIS Account_Detail export for the general fund athletics orgs S3066672 and S3066671, all object codes.
What the PEG Access fund spent in FY2020 and in FY2024
In both years the annual town report prints two totals for the same year's PEG expenses and they differ. FY2020, both tables on printed page 75: FY20 Line Item Expenses by Percentage foots to Total $116,933.22 and FY20 REVENUE vs EXPENSES prints Expenses $116,933.54 -- 32 cents apart. FY2024: the statement on printed page 63 prints Expenses $174,150 and the line-item table on printed page 64 foots to Total $174,151.16, and since that statement is printed in whole dollars throughout, rounding 174,151.16 gives 174,151 rather than 174,150. Each table foots to its own printed total exactly, so neither is internally wrong; they disagree with each other. FY2017 is a third case of the same shape: its ten printed expense lines add to $74,665.74 against a printed TOTAL of $74,215.73, a difference of $450.01, of which $450.00 is the Vendor Expenses line that the facing pie chart also omits. WHAT IS NOT ESTABLISHED: which figure is the year's expenditure in any of the three years. -- closes: the MUNIS year-to-date expense report (glytdbud) for the PEG Access and Cable Related Enterprise Fund for FY2017, FY2020 and FY2024, the same report the town already runs for the general fund.
people
How many people the schools actually employ
The town publishes per-school staff ROSTERS in every annual report, FY2011 to FY2025 — a list of names. A roster carries no FTE, so a 0.4 music teacher and a full-timer are one row each, and it is a point in time, undated within the year. A count of names the town printed is a real quantity and it is not a staffing level. — closes: a staffing report stating FTE by position and year.
Which fund pays which post
This is the load-bearing one. The rosters name people and the budget names dollars, and nothing published joins them to a funding source. So a paraprofessional line rising cannot be distinguished from a grant that was paying for those posts ending — which is exactly what the special education escalator rests on. — closes: DESE's End of Year Financial Report, which separates spending by fund.
Whether a budgeted position was filled
A budget line is money the town has to raise, not a person in a chair. A line funded all year for a post vacant half of it looks identical on the page to one that was filled. Bounded, not settled: the rosters show who was printed, which narrows the question without answering it. — closes: a filled-position list, or payroll by position rather than by name.
How many children play sports
Two town documents give 593 and 649 for the same year and count different things: one counts fee categories, the other counts participations by sport, and a participation is not a child — one student playing three seasons is three of them. Some workbook rows are negative, subtracting out-of-district athletes back out, so a season total is a net figure rather than a headcount of bodies. Nothing published is an unduplicated count. — closes: an unduplicated athlete roster, or a participation report that states whether it counts students or participations.
How many children Chapter 70 is actually paid for
The aid is calculated on a Foundation enrollment of 1,599 in DESE’s FY27 Chapter 70 summary. DESE publishes three other counts for the same district — Student Headcount, In-District FTE Pupils and Total FTE Pupils — and in the latest year published they are 1,563, 1,568.9 and 1,665.9. Four numbers, one agency, none of them equal, measured on different dates and counting different things. So every per-pupil figure on this project, including aid per pupil, is a division by a count whose definition has to be stated with it, and no published document reconciles the foundation count to the children in the buildings. — closes: DESE’s FY27 foundation enrollment worksheet for Lunenburg, which states the October 1 count by grade and category the formula was run on.
held
What the $87,293.86 is that the FY2023 annual report states twice and differently
Two tables printed in the same FY2023 annual town report state the money held in special revenue and enterprise funds, and they disagree. The combined balance sheet on printed page 24 gives TOTAL FUND EQUITY of $6,131,303.68 for SPECIAL REVENUE and $3,812,502.24 for ENTERPRISE, $9,943,805.92 together. The special revenue schedule in the same report prints a GRAND TOTAL carried forward of $10,031,099.78. The difference is $87,293.86, where FY2011, FY2013, FY2019 and FY2022 agree to the cent. It is not a misreading: the FY2023 page was transcribed and every column foots to its own printed TOTAL ASSETS, TOTAL LIABILITIES and TOTAL FUND EQUITY, the accounting identity holds in all six columns, and the long-term debt mirror agrees. So FY2023 is transcribed and deliberately NOT written into the dataset, which is why the combined balance sheet here stops at FY2022 while the special revenue schedule runs to FY2023. One explanation has been tested and RULED OUT: the fund 'Sale of Cemetery Lots' carried $87,308.09 in FY2023, within $14.23 of the gap, which suggested a fund counted in one statement and classified elsewhere in the other. It is not that — the same fund appears in the schedule in all thirteen years including the four where the two documents agree to the cent, so it is counted consistently and the near-match is a coincidence. What the difference IS remains unestablished; nothing here says which document is right, nor whether it is connected to the $17,861.24 of grant funds the town restated between the FY2022 and FY2023 reports. Those are two different amounts and nothing joins them. — closes: the Town's FY2023 trial balance or general ledger fund balances as of 30 June 2023, which would say which of its own two published tables the accounting system agrees with.
What the $102,000.00 is that the FY2024 enterprise balance sheet classifies two ways at once
The Combining Balance Sheet - Enterprise Funds in the FY2024 annual town report — printed twice, on printed pages 21 and 28, identically — prints 'Reserved for expenditures' as 400,000.00 in the Sewer column and 502,000.00 in the Totals (Memorandum Only) column, and prints 'Unreserved retained earnings' as 2,973,842.15 in the memorandum column where the four fund columns (1,813,817.53 Sewer, 51,333.93 Water, 181,853.82 Solid Waste, 1,028,836.87 PEG Access) add to 3,075,842.15. The memorandum column is $102,000.00 high on the first line and $102,000.00 low on the second, so the two cancel and Total Fund Equity (3,483,633.65), Total Assets, the identity and the sheet's own printed PROOF row all still tie in every column — compensating errors, invisible to any check that reads only totals. WHAT IS NOT ESTABLISHED: which presentation is right, or what the $102,000.00 is. A reservation sitting in a fund column that prints blank, a memorandum column keyed to a different worksheet row, and a reclassification made only in the total column all fit the same signature, and nothing on the page distinguishes them. These are ratepayer funds; nothing here is general-fund money. — closes: the Town Accountant's FY2024 trial balance for the enterprise funds, which would state the reserved and unreserved balance of each fund separately.
What the town held town-wide at 30 June 2024 and 30 June 2025
The FY2024 and FY2025 annual town reports print NO combined balance sheet across all fund types and account groups — the schedule the reports carried every year from FY2011 to FY2023. In both editions the table of contents lists 'Balance Sheet for FY Ending June 30, 2024' at Page 21 and 'Balance Sheet for FY Ending June 30, 2025' at Page 21 respectively, and printed page 21 of each holds the Combining Balance Sheet - Enterprise Funds instead; FY2024 prints that enterprise sheet a second time on page 28, which is where its contents page says it should be. So for two consecutive years the only balance sheet the town published covers four ratepayer enterprise funds and says nothing about the general fund, special revenue, capital projects, trust and agency, or long-term debt. The consequence is that the general fund's cash, receivables, reserves and undesignated fund balance — the figures free cash is built out of — cannot be read for either year, and the balance_sheet dataset stops at FY2023 for that reason rather than by choice. WHAT IS NOT ESTABLISHED: whether the town-wide sheet was produced and dropped in layout or never produced; nothing in either report says. — closes: the Town Accountant's year-end balance sheet submitted to the Division of Local Services for FY2024 and FY2025, or the town's audited financial statements for those years.
What the PEG Access enterprise fund actually held at 30 June 2025
Three figures for the same fund on the same date appear in the same FY2025 annual town report and no document in this archive prints a line between any two of them. The PAC report's FY25 REVENUE vs EXPENSES table (printed page 60, pdf 64) gives an Ending Balance of $30,632, computed on its own face as Beginning Balance $208,772 less Expenses $178,140 -- and the prose beside it says the $208,772 was "the budget starting balance", so the ending balance is unspent spending authority rather than money. The Treasurer's Cash schedule in the same report prints Bartholomew- PEG Access Enterprise Fund 782,591.31$. The Combining Balance Sheet - Enterprise Funds (printed page 21, pdf 25) prints PEG Access Total Fund Equity of $1,072,661.74, against $1,028,836.87 the year before -- a rise of $43,824.87, where the statement's own revenue less expenses is $262,565 - $178,140 = $84,425. The two do not reconcile and nothing on either page relates them. WHAT IS NOT ESTABLISHED: which quantity any of the three is; a budget balance, a bank balance and a fund equity are three different things and the report labels none of them as such. -- closes: the Town Accountant's FY2025 year-end statement of revenues, expenditures and changes in fund balance for the PEG Access and Cable Related Enterprise Fund, which the annual report does not contain.
These are held records that do not contain the answer. The town publishes a great deal; what it does not publish is the mapping — which fund pays which post, which project a transfer bought, which share of a pooled assessment is the school’s. A budget line is what the town must raise after everything else has paid its share, and nothing on the page marks what that was.
The documents that would close these
glytdbud-expense for the special revenue funds
The identical report the town already runs for the general fund and for each of the four enterprise funds, pointed at funds 13xx/22xx/26xx–29xx instead.
would close it · Turns every restricted edge above from presumption into traced fact — athletics, lunch, circuit breaker, extended day, and every grant.
WRRS annual actuarial valuation, by member unit
Published by the retirement system.
would close it · Sizes the school share of the $2.39M pension assessment.
The Town Manager’s revenue apportionment worksheet
Seen once; we do not hold it.
would close it · Documents the convention by which general-fund revenue is presented as split across departments. It cannot make the edge traceable — nothing can — but it makes the convention citable.
DESE End of Year Financial Report
Published by the state.
would close it · Separates district spending by FUND, which is the one thing the town’s budget documents never show.
Where bus fee receipts are booked
A revenue account, a fund, or a statement that they are netted before booking.
would close it · The fee schedule is published and verified; STUDENTBUS shows zero. A charged fee with no observable destination is the clearest single gap in this model.
The period 13 ledger
The year-end close.
would close it · Reconciles FY2026 properly; period 12 is used for now.
The town’s Chapter 32B enrolment schedule
Not published anywhere in this archive; the town must hold one to administer the plan and set premium shares.
would close it · Splits every insurance account between the town and the schools, in every year, instead of in the two years the split happens to be printed.
The Cherry Sheet itself — what the state told Lunenburg to expect, receipt by receipt
This archive holds no Cherry Sheet for any year. The Cherry Sheet is the state’s own statement of estimated aid and assessments to a Massachusetts town, and it is what a tax rate is set on. Without it the only measurement of aid estimate error this project can make is one net line on the Division of Local Services free cash proof — Excess/Shortfall Cherry Sheet Receipts (CL#8) — which lumps Chapter 70, Unrestricted General Government Aid, the abatement reimbursements and every other receipt into a single figure. So a year that came in $390,814 short can be reported as short and cannot be reported as short in anything.
would close it · DLS Cherry Sheet CS 1-ER (estimated receipts) and CS 1-EB (estimated charges) for Lunenburg, FY2021 to FY2027.
39 entries in total, published as /api/money_gaps.json and queryable as money_gaps. Each is something we went looking for and could not establish — not a claim about anybody.
Sixteen annual town reports were read page by page into datasets. Checked means the extract was recomputed against a total the report itself prints and agreed with it. Most of it has not been.
913
rows checked against a printed total
9,405
rows whose columns do not sum to the total the report prints
6,610
rows from a table that prints no total to check against
16,928
extracted rows in all
| dataset | checked | check failed | no check |
|---|---|---|---|
report_appropriations⚠ | 0 | 4,530 | 135 |
report_gross_wages⚠ | 0 | 0 | 3,545 |
special_revenue_funds⚠ | 0 | 2,058 | 328 |
report_elections | 323 | 1,688 | 1 |
annual_report_receipts | 504 | 85 | 548 |
report_trust_funds | 12 | 417 | 213 |
report_capital_projects⚠ | 0 | 529 | 87 |
report_dept_activity⚠ | 0 | 0 | 515 |
report_debt | 74 | 98 | 182 |
report_enrollment_mcas⚠ | 0 | 0 | 337 |
report_valuation⚠ | 0 | 0 | 316 |
report_officials⚠ | 0 | 0 | 237 |
report_vital_records⚠ | 0 | 0 | 96 |
report_monty_tech⚠ | 0 | 0 | 70 |
rate_register⚠ | 0 | 0 | 0 |
⚠ marks a dataset where nothing is checked. A failed check is usually a property of the instrument rather than of the data: the special revenue schedule carried a failing label from the day it was extracted, and reconciled to the penny the first time somebody put the extract next to the page it came from.
In every report, and never extracted at all
town_meeting — 15 years, 924 figure rows
What Town Meeting actually voted, article by article. The appropriation is the OUTPUT of these votes, and the archive currently holds the output and not the decision.
balance_sheet — 14 years, 488 figure rows
The combining balance sheet — what the town HOLDS, against the flow tables the archive already has. pdf_tables.py names this page specifically as one where plain extraction mode wins and layout mode recovers zero of its 61 money tokens.
tax_rate — 15 years, 216 figure rows
The tax rate by class and year. Small, and it is the number every resident actually feels.
1,628 figure rows in all, counted by reading the reports and never read into anything. The wider survey catalogued 866 tables in those reports; 199 have been read into a dataset. The difference is not all loss — a catalogue entry can be the same table on another page, or prose — and it is not nothing either.
32 of 36 report-years are outstanding for FY2024–FY2026. Every one is a report the Town can run out of MUNIS; 4 have arrived and are not asked for again. This list is computed from what the archive holds, so a document that arrives leaves it.
FY2024
Account Details, transaction level
Every transaction against an account, with its date. The only report that answers WHEN in the year a line went wrong, and the only one that names a vendor.
Appropriation as voted
MUNIS original appropriation. What Town Meeting actually voted, before transfers.
End of Year Financial Report, by fund
Spending separated by fund. THE load-bearing document: the one thing that tells a grant paying for staff apart from the town paying for them, which is what rule 11 is entirely about.
Revolving and grant fund activity
What the general fund line is net OF. Rule 11.
Year-end position (period 12)
June, with the books not yet closed. Shows where a year landed; not what it finally turned back.
Purchase orders closed after close
The step that moved FY25 from $582,115.44 to $603,885.97. Not recoverable from one report run.
Q1 spend report (period 3)
First quarter. Needed for the seasonal baseline that makes a burn rate mean anything.
Q2 spend report (period 6)
Half year.
Q3 spend report (period 9)
Three quarters. The last point at which a surplus could still be redirected.
Year-end close (period 13)
After the lapse period. The surplus IS the available column on this report.
Revenue ledger
Chapter 70, local receipts, and transfers in. The expense side cannot see any of it.
Line-item transfers, with authority
What moved between lines during the year and who authorised it. Settles the kindergarten paraprofessional question, which three readings currently fit.
FY2025
Account Details, transaction level
Every transaction against an account, with its date. The only report that answers WHEN in the year a line went wrong, and the only one that names a vendor.
Appropriation as voted
MUNIS original appropriation. What Town Meeting actually voted, before transfers.
End of Year Financial Report, by fund
Spending separated by fund. THE load-bearing document: the one thing that tells a grant paying for staff apart from the town paying for them, which is what rule 11 is entirely about.
Revolving and grant fund activity
What the general fund line is net OF. Rule 11.
Year-end position (period 12)
June, with the books not yet closed. Shows where a year landed; not what it finally turned back.
Purchase orders closed after close
The step that moved FY25 from $582,115.44 to $603,885.97. Not recoverable from one report run.
Q1 spend report (period 3)
First quarter. Needed for the seasonal baseline that makes a burn rate mean anything.
Q2 spend report (period 6)
Half year.
Q3 spend report (period 9)
Three quarters. The last point at which a surplus could still be redirected.
Year-end close (period 13)
After the lapse period. The surplus IS the available column on this report.
Revenue ledger
Chapter 70, local receipts, and transfers in. The expense side cannot see any of it.
Line-item transfers, with authority
What moved between lines during the year and who authorised it. Settles the kindergarten paraprofessional question, which three readings currently fit.
FY2026
Account Details, transaction level
Every transaction against an account, with its date. The only report that answers WHEN in the year a line went wrong, and the only one that names a vendor.
End of Year Financial Report, by fund
Spending separated by fund. THE load-bearing document: the one thing that tells a grant paying for staff apart from the town paying for them, which is what rule 11 is entirely about.
Purchase orders closed after close
The step that moved FY25 from $582,115.44 to $603,885.97. Not recoverable from one report run.
Q1 spend report (period 3)
First quarter. Needed for the seasonal baseline that makes a burn rate mean anything.
Q2 spend report (period 6)
Half year.
Q3 spend report (period 9)partial
Three quarters. The last point at which a surplus could still be redirected.
Year-end close (period 13)
After the lapse period. The surplus IS the available column on this report.
Line-item transfers, with authority
What moved between lines during the year and who authorised it. Settles the kindergarten paraprofessional question, which three readings currently fit.
The single ask that closes the most
Everything received so far is Fund 0100 — the town’s share and nothing else. These are the funds that spent money on the schools in FY26 and cannot be attached to any budget line. The simplest form of the ask is the same report with the fund criterion left blank.
2200 SCHOOL LUNCH REVOLVING1312 EXTENDED DAY REVOLVING FUND2813 FY25 #2402814 FY26 #2401301 CHAPTER 658 REVOLVING FUND1305 AFTER SCHOOL ACTIVITIES FUND2778 FY25 117 SOA EVIDENCE BASE1308 SCHOOL CHOICE REVOLVING2672 FY26 FAMILY & COMMUNITY 2371306 SCHOOL FACILITIES USE REVOLV2832 FY25 #274 02052025093020252681 COMP SCHOOL HEALTH SERV GRANTAlready received — not asked for again
Where a route could not be traced and the analysis still had to say something, it says it as an assumption and names what would test it. These are inferences, not measurements.
A restricted fund’s spending goes to its own program
evidence · It is what the fund exists for, and a revolving fund is bound by the vote that created it.
what rests on it · Every restricted edge above rests on this.
would settle it · An expense report for the special revenue funds.
SCHRESSTIP is a school resource officer stipend
evidence · Read from the abbreviation, in the police department.
what rests on it · A $6,800 line. Immaterial, and still an inference.
would settle it · The account’s full name from MUNIS, which truncates at ten characters.
The general-fund SCHCOSTREI line and fund 2640 are not the same money
evidence · Nothing. They are similar magnitudes and we have not established either way.
what rests on it · If they are the same money, a total that counts both double-counts $318,424.
would settle it · The town accountant, or a transfer record between the two.
The district workbook total ties to the dept 300 appropriation
evidence · They land 0.4% apart for FY2026.
what rests on it · Used to argue the $26m is the town’s bill rather than a gross figure.
would settle it · Whether the 0.4% is netting or simply that settled holds 252 lines where proposed holds 321.
The pension assessment includes school non-teaching staff
evidence · Standard Massachusetts practice: teachers in the state system, other municipal employees in the county system. Our archive does not say this.
what rests on it · The reason the pension is treated as a school cost at all.
would settle it · The WRRS annual actuarial valuation, which reports by member unit.
MSBA reimbursement stopped because a bond reached term
evidence · Nothing. It is a guess that fits.
what rests on it · Explains $474,239 a year that arrived through FY2022 and is zero in FY2026.
would settle it · The town’s debt schedule, or the MSBA’s own payment record.
Every count on this page is computed when the site is built, from the same files a reader can download. Nothing here is typed into a sentence.
/api/money_gaps.json — what the published records do not answer, and the document that would./data/extraction-gaps.json — what has been read from the annual reports, and what has been checked./data/data-request.json — the report-years outstanding from the Town, recomputed from what is held./api/money_assumptions.json — every assumption the money model rests on, with what would settle it./data/traceability.json — the six rungs above, each with its state, its reason and its figures, recomputed from the ledger.How the money does move, where it can be followed, is the other half of this area — .