Here’s why not every town sponsors a big Fourth of July celebration:

Aberdeen’s celebration Tuesday cost the town government a cool $14,350, if actual expenditures matched what the town budgeted. It probably cost more than that.

The budget for Aberdeen’s Independence Day celebration broke down this way: $7,500 for fireworks, $3,000 for publicity and the multitude of other advance expenditures, $2,100 for musical entertainment, $1,250 for supplies and equipment, and $500 for technicians.

That’s in addition to the regular salaries and wages for recreation, police and fire personnel who worked the event.

Last year’s Aberdeen Fourth of July celebration was budgeted at $14,300 but wound up costing the town $25,741.40, including $15,300 for fireworks alone.

Almost everyone who attended Tuesday’s celebration seemed to agree that it was bigger and better than last year, and that probably means that the town overshot its budget again.

But Tuesday was just the fourth day of the fiscal year, so there’s plenty of time to save money in other budget line items to offset any overexpenditure.

Special Events: The Fourth of July celebration is not the only special event in the Aberdeen town budget for fiscal year 2000-2001 — far from it.

The budget contains appropriations of $950 for “youth programs,” $1,000 for an Easter egg hunt, $800 for a car show, $300 for a Halloween haunted house and $200 for a Christmas tree lighting program.

Then there’s $700 for a basketball clinic and $300 for a cheerleading clinic.

A teen dance that was in the budget in former years has been omitted from the current-year budget.

But it wasn’t budgeted for last year, either, and the town still spent $118.78 on it.

Contributions: The Aberdeen Town Board of Commissioners has cut way back on its contributions to private organizations, since state law allows such contributions only on a contract basis.

The board is negotiating such a contractual arrangement (using funds from the 1999-2000 fiscal year) with the Optimist Club to help support youth league baseball.

It also has budgeted contributions of $5,000 to the Aberdeen Public Library, $500 to the Aberdeen Rescue Squad, $1,600 to the rescue squad’s retirement fund, and $1,000 to the Lions Club, as well as a $6,460 contribution to the Sandhills Area Chamber of Commerce economic development program.

That’s a total of $14,560 in contributions — a far cry from two years ago, when a one-time $45,000 contribution to the Aberdeen Head Start fund drive bumped the contributions budget up to $51,271.

Personnel Costs: Town Manager Tony Robertson has called this year a “retrenching year” for Aberdeen’s town budget.

By next year, he predicted, residential and business development in the town will be booming, adding to the town’s tax base and bringing in more revenue to fund the services the town provides for its residents.

Aberdeen has long been more ambitious in its provision of these services than most towns of around 3,000 population. As municipal services increase, the personnel line items in the municipal budget generally grow proportionately, becoming a greater and greater percentage of the total budget.

It takes people to provide services.

In almost every town you can name under 20,000 population, the personnel line items in the budget total between 45 and 55 percent of total budgeted expenditures.

Aberdeen is pushing the envelope on the 55 percent mark.

Budgeted expenditures this fiscal year for wages and salaries, Social Security matching payments, employee health insurance, retirement and 401(k) plan contributions, a firefighters’ pension fund, workers’ compensation, unemployment insurance, employee safety programs, training, travel, uniforms and uniform cleaning, “employee functions,” pre-employment screening and certain other employee benefits total $2,460,882. That’s 54.5 percent of Aberdeen’s $4,517,632 budget.

If Robertson’s prediction about tax base growth is correct, the total dollar expenditure for personnel cost will be greater next year — but it will be a smaller percentage of the total budget. As the tax base grows, the personnel budget will probably begin to creep back down toward the 45 percent mark, as the town spends more money on equipment purchases and capital outlay projects that it could not afford in earlier years.

They Also Serve: Hidden in the warp and woof of last year’s Aberdeen town budget was a $300 appropriation for “veterinary expense.”

That was for the Aberdeen Police Department’s K-9 officer.

Only $87.95 was actually expended.