With the end of the fiscal year looming on June 30, selectmen voted unanimously to honor five requests from town departments to transfer money within their budgets to cover shortfalls.

Finance Director John Madden explained Monday that under the Acts of 2005, towns have the flexibility to transfer funds within a department’s budgets or within the overall town budget to cover shortfalls.

He recommended selectmen approve the five transfer requests from four departments.

For the police department, selectmen approved a transfer of $8,689 from the police salaries account to a police expenses account to fund a request by Police Chief Matthew Clancy to buy new technology and software to assist in crime scene investigations. Madden said Clancy had been asking for this technology for the past several years in his capital budget but had been denied.  As Clancy plans to return as much as $200,000 in unused funds earmarked for overtime to the town’s general fund, Madden recommended the request. He said Clancy felt that having this new crime scene tool would have been useful when tracking the suspect involved in a shooting in Duxbury last month.

Selectmen also supported a transfer of $37,250 from the fire department expense budget to fire department personal services budget. This action moves funds that are dedicated for paying for firefighters’ uniforms from one account to another. This is necessary because firefighters will now receive an allowance for their uniforms instead of being reimbursed for their uniform purchases, as was the past practice.

Two transfers were approved for the Department of Public Works (DPW).  Director Peter Buttkus recommended $7,000 be transferred from the DPW vehicle maintenance account to the DPW personal services account to help offset the cost of funding a retirement payout of $15,783 for a cemetery employee.  Buttkus also needed a $6,000 transfer from the Lands and Natural Resources personal services account to the highway personal services account to partially fund another retirement, this one totaling $7,422.

The final transfer request came from Town Clerk Nancy Oates and was related to the costs of holding a Special Town Meeting and election last fall. Oates needed an additional $860 to fund a gap in her budget to pay for police details and election workers. These funds are from the town clerk personal services account and will go into the election registration personal services account.